Bubble Cloner Problems :(

[Devilman]

Hey all, hoping I can pick a few brains here, having a few problems with a new bubble cloner I've started messing around with about a week ago.

Its a pretty simple setup of a small bucket, polystyrene top etc..

I PH.ed to around 6.0 at the start of things, temps in the water seem to hold around mid 70's F (max fluctuation I have seen in a week was about 10degrees F)

I've tried split stems, with a bit of scuffing etc.. to expose the cambium layer (sp?) and have approx 1" airgap between the water and the polystyrene, with the stems probably about 1/4" from the water.

So far, a few leaves are starting to lighten off etc.. but no sign of any roots or even "bumps" after a week, the stems dont seem really mushy like they are about to squash, but the edges do feel a bit soft and squishy.

I can try and grab some pics later if needed?

Thanks all.

 

[Shafto]

I've seen it take up to 10 days for stubs to appear. Depends on conditions and strain I think.

As long as the stem tips aren't mushy just wait, you'll get the roots.

 

[Builtaforest]

Could you throw up a pic of the donor plants/mothers?

The worse off they are, the longer it will take to root, if at all.

Recommend those temps under 70... But this is a bit subjective.

 

[Devilman]

I managed to snap a couple pics earlier before the camera batteries died.

Could you throw up a pic of the donor plants/mothers?

The worse off they are, the longer it will take to root, if at all.

Recommend those temps under 70... But this is a bit subjective.

Sadly I have no pics available of the parents, but they were all healthy plants that had recently come from seed (approx 1month ago) and I topped each one and figured I would give a bubble cloner a try, rather than my usual method of clonex & root riot / root-it cubes)

I've seen it take up to 10 days for stubs to appear. Depends on conditions and strain I think.

As long as the stem tips aren't mushy just wait, you'll get the roots.

Well sadly the stem tips do seem a little mushy now, some worse than others. for example, one is quite "mushy" and soft / limp for the whole length of the stem that is below the polystyrene, while another its just a couple of millimeters that are like this.

I havent been using a humidity dome ontop of them, but they are just infront of my (currently open) tent which has plants in veg, so humidity is in the 40-50% region still, so I dont think its a humidity problem, I'm wondering if I have too much water in the bubbler (so the stems get too wet, at the moment there is approx 1 inch airgap), or if the temps are too high or just varying too much (water temp seems to fluctuate approx 10F and airtemp about 10-12F)

Any advice is welcome, as I am hoping to move towards a medium-less grow (either DWC, or aero) so would be great to get a medium-less cloning setup sorted first

Apologies for the large images, my camera was complaining a lot about trying to focus close-in

 

[jackmayoffer]

less leaf more stem and putting your pump on a timer helps usally 15 off 30 sec to a minute on. Tap water at 250 ppm works good or a lite dose of nutes 300 to 400 ppm max. You need more stem sticking out lower. And healthy moms..

 

[Devilman]

less leaf more stem and putting your pump on a timer helps usally 15 off 30 sec to a minute on. Tap water at 250 ppm works good or a lite dose of nutes 300 to 400 ppm max. You need more stem sticking out lower. And healthy moms..

Hmm yeah the pump is running 24/7 with no off-time. I used tapwater before, typically mine seems to come out of the tap with high 7's in PH and EC of around 0.4, however I did PH it down to 6.1ish (I have a blue-orb EC wand but I notice ppm has 2 different conversion factors, so not sure which to go by?)

more stem you say? in what way? longer so that part of it is in the water, or just more below the polystyrene but still within say 1/4" of the surface? (so basically lowering the water level to have a longer stem to let it dry out a bit more?)

are my temp swings too high? or just too high temps in general? is a humidity dome a good idea? (although from what I can tell it shouldnt be a problem since the room is approx 50% RH and from what I have read, bubblers and aero cloners dont really need it?)

lastly.. when you say more stem less leaf, tbh I thought I had already chopped the leaves back a fair bit, are you suggesting I should have stripped even more off, if so any specifics? (such as removing all leaves except the tip? or just lower fans etc..)?

Thanks again

 

[Shafto]

Hey Devilman,

Get more stem beneath your rubber stopper. A good 3-4 inches. With your stem so close to the foam rubber right now, the water will totally saturate it, and your stems will get rot and turn to mush like they are doing now.

Two of your clones look too large to me, and the others a little withered. I myself take much smaller clones, but that's just me. Definitely more stem under the foam rubber though, and lower your water level accordingly, get it away from the foam rubber a bit so it doesn't saturate with water so much.

I've never worried about a humidity dome or the temp when cloning, haven't found that it makes much different myself. 7-10 days regardless depending on strain for root tips to appear for me.

 

[Devilman]

Hey Devilman,

Get more stem beneath your rubber stopper. A good 3-4 inches. With your stem so close to the foam rubber right now, the water will totally saturate it, and your stems will get rot and turn to mush like they are doing now.

Two of your clones look too large to me, and the others a little withered. I myself take much smaller clones, but that's just me. Definitely more stem under the foam rubber though, and lower your water level accordingly, get it away from the foam rubber a bit so it doesn't saturate with water so much.

I've never worried about a humidity dome or the temp when cloning, haven't found that it makes much different myself. 7-10 days regardless depending on strain for root tips to appear for me.

Thanks for the info. I've re-done some of the cloner now, and clipped the bottom mushy bit off the stems, chopped off the lowest sets of fan leaves (the ones that were yellowing) to push the clones through the polystyrene more.

I have noticed that 1 clone seems to have the first signs of a root-shoot on it though

I know the clones are a little large, they came from topping the 5 seeds I had planted, so were'nt specifically a clone per-se, more that I decided to clone since I had topped the plants anyway.

Will try and grab a couple pics of the changes later on

Thanks

 

[Devilman]

Well, I've left the cloner running most of the day and when coming back I'm still finding large droplets of water collected on the bottoms of the stems, so I've tried lowering the water-level even more, but if that doesnt fix it, I asume the obvious step forward is to put a timer on the pump to give them a chance to dry out ? It would be nice if I didnt have to, since its just easier not having to mess around with timers etc

 

[Shafto]

Water droplets on the stems is nothing to worry about. Oxygenated fizzy water will jump up and get your stems wet, nothing to worry about. You just don't want the rubber stopper getting soaking wet.

 

[Devilman]

Well, one of my cuttings has roots showing now hopefully the others will catch up soon, although they might take a little longer as I had to re-cut the ends of the stems since they had gotten a bit mushy from the easier problems.

Thanks all

 

[Blaz3]

WHEN TO TRANSPLANT

 

[KUSHEATER1]

just drop them in keep pump on 24/7 make good clean cuts that's what I do and 100% clone rate easy peasy no fuss 7 to 10 days white hairs everywhere I have found that the quality of the cut makes a difference I don't fool with the cloner water at all no testing at all

 

[fizzbomb]

Hi Devilman, with Bubble cloners your stem has to be in the water, if your using an aeroponic propagator they dont, but if using a bubble cloner your stems have to be in the water to survive, been using the bubble cloner for years with excellent results, here's a few pics. these clones have been in the bubble cloner for about 2 weeks.

 

[ak-51]

Hi Devilman, with Bubble cloners your stem has to be in the water

Not necessarily true. Maybe with your bubble cloners it is.

I ran little home made bubble cloners for a long time before I bought an EZ-cloner and I always ran it with the stems out of the water. The bubbles popping would kick enough little droplets upwards to keep the stems wet. It worked pretty well.

If you notice in those pictures I have check-back valves on each line in the top photo. I would never use those things again. The rubber inside of them was really shitty and after a while they would get stiff and really choke off the air supply, eventually just cutting it off completely, which would then rip the diaphragm in my pump. Just elevate the air pump above the level of the water. The less shit you have in line the more airflow you get anyway.

I upgraded to an EZ-cloner for added capacity. I needed more than the 28 sites that my little home made cloners provided and I didn't feel like making more of them. I just wanted one big one.

 

[fizzbomb]

lol, your post gave me a laugh ak-51 and i will explain why, you have went and purchased an EZ-Cloner for added capacity as your 28 site home made cloner was just not big enough , im not sure if it occurred to you that you can put more than 1 clone in a hole lol, if you have a right good close up look at my pics i posted you will see that each site has 2 cuts in them, which makes my 27 site cloner into a 54 without having to purchase a bigger cloner .

and yes with MY bubble cloner the stems are in the water by about 1" and i will explain the reason why. if your running your bubble cloner with the stems just out the water with the bubbles popping to keep the stems wet like the way you do ak-51 lol then your taking some chance as if that water level drops any and they little bubbles dont reach the stem, your in trouble, but if your stems are in the water by 1" you have more leeway if the water level does drop any, you wont need to keep checking on them everyday as well.

as soon as i take my cuts they get left for 1 week without me having to do shit and after 1 week i will replace the water with fresh water, i will fill my cutting board until the water is touching the bottom of the little net pot, and the stem of the cut will be about 1" - 2" below the little net pot, and i cut the bottom of the net pot away before i place any of the cuts inside as when they get roots, its much much easier to remove them from the net pot.

Devilman when you take your cut your dont need to split the stem the way you have, you can just cut it and stick it in the cloner, no need to split it up the middle m8.

like i said ak-51, its not so hard to separate any of they roots, easy if you know what your doing but i can understand from the pic i posted that it might look a bit hard if you have never seen that amount of roots before or if your a wee guy who dont know what they are doing lol, but after a while you get the hang of it, you just gently tease them apart, not that hard at all m8.

lol @ purchased a bigger cloner try 2 cuts in each site, it really does work m8

p.s, only thing missing from your post is the root shot ak-51 ????

 

[ak-51]

lol, your post gave me a laugh ak-51 and i will explain why, you have went and purchased an EZ-Cloner for added capacity as your 28 site home made cloner was just not big enough , im not sure if it occurred to you that you can put more than 1 clone in a hole lol, if you have a right good close up look at my pics i posted you will see that each site has 2 cuts in them, which makes my 27 site cloner into a 54 without having to purchase a bigger cloner

Needing more capacity prompted me to change things, and there were a few reasons why I went with the EZ cloner.

I didn't want to use those as-is because there were a few problems with those two cloners. Firstly the lids were concave on the bottom which meant that water would run down the lid and out of the side. It wouldn't lose water quickly, but I would have to top off the water level maybe every 2 or 3 days to maintain a consistent level. Another thing is that the air stones didn't do the best job of bubbling evenly. Some of them worked well and some of them didn't. Often this would create dead spots where I would lose probably one or two clones each time I ran a batch.

While they were working, they weren't running as smoothly as I wanted, and I wasn't interested in either fixing them or making a brand new bubble cloner. For that reason and also the fact that I had the money, I decided to just buy the aero cloner I did.

But just for the record there is absolutely nothing wrong with a properly made bubble cloner. If I had to make one again I could certainly make a better one than the ones I had, knowing what I know now.

like i said ak-51, its not so hard to separate any of they roots

The roots mine would throw off were micro-hair and fishbone city. They would become wrapped around each other if they got too long and then become what seemed like impossible to extract.

lol @ purchased a bigger cloner try 2 cuts in each site, it really does work m8

I already threw them away.

p.s, only thing missing from your post is the root shot ak-51 ????

I looked through my albums and this is the only one I could find:

I have no idea how old those clones were at the time the picture was taken.

 

[fizzbomb]

lol, was just messing with ya ak-51, the reason i know about the 2 clones in each site was because the guy in my local grow store, they always trying to sell you something, so he was like, we got new cloning stations in, double the size of the other 1s and they hold double the clones, i laughed in his face and told him to fuck off, I asked if they were double the price of the other 1s as well lol ??? and when i told him my reasons why i dont need 1 ( 2 clones in each site ) he laughed and said the amount of people he has sold that big cloner to and not 1 of them suggested putting 2 clones into each site into the smaller cloner, so you would not be the first person to buy a big cloner not thinking that you can double them up into a smaller cloner ak-51, you would be surprised at how many people do the same as yourself, if that guy in the growshop sells me something, then it must be good, some of us ( me ) have just not got the cash to be buying things I dont need, which at that time was a bigger cloner when i can just double each site up and stick 2 in, tbh your home made cloners looked really good ak-51, you dont even need to use the lid if its concaved, just get some corrugated plastic that they use for the lids of the aeroponic propagators with the holes for the net pots already in them, that kinda material, and make your own holes, just a little smaller than the neropane collars, and just sit the neropane collar on top of the hole, its impossible for it to fall through as the hole you already made is to small for the collar to fall through, and you can make about 50 - 60 small holes and double each site up, turning it into a 120 site cloner, hope that makes some sense lol, make your own lid and your own holes and just sit the neropane collar on top of the hole, no need for net pots or making holes the size of net pots, just cut little holes and you can make as many as you like , but nothing wrong at all with your home made cloner ak-51, looks good m8.

 

[Blaz3]

Wow fixxbomg..excellent bubbler..did you build that yourself mate?!

 

[Devilman]

Hi Devilman, with Bubble cloners your stem has to be in the water, if your using an aeroponic propagator they dont, but if using a bubble cloner your stems have to be in the water to survive, been using the bubble cloner for years with excellent results, here's a few pics. these clones have been in the bubble cloner for about 2 weeks.

Well, at first I had the water level within about 1" of the top, with the stems in the water but was having problems with mushy stems etc.. so decided to drain a large portion of the water out and rely on the bubbles bursting etc.. which did help, stems werent mushy anymore and roots popped.

However since then, they have made very little progress in the way of growth.. They look healthy enough, but Im wondering if both my origional "mushy stem problem" and this are both related...

From my understanding, A bubble-cloner is really not far apart from DWC (just smaller container etc..) so once the plants had rooted, I kinda fully expected them to just take off, but this hasnt really been the case for me.. I am begining to wonder if I have water temp issues, perhaps this was the main reason for mushy stems (and now slow growth)?

Out of interest, what sort of water / air temps are people running in bubble cloners and in DWC ? I seem to recall that cuttings like slightly warmer rootzone temps while trying to root?

Also, what kind of Liters/min airpumps are people using, and to how much water? I'm asuming that a bubble cloner isnt going to be half as much as an established plant growing in DWC?

Cheers all.