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Snype's Guide To Cloning In Rockwool Or Aeroponics With 100% Success Rates!

Snype

Active member
Veteran
Snype's Guide To Cloning In Rockwool Or Aeroponics With 100% Success Rates!

This guide is to help out fellow growers who don't have perfect success in Rockwool or Aeroponics. Because of the data that I keep, I know how to have 100% success rates with my cuttings. I haven't lost 1 cutting for at least the last 10 years because of what I have learned.

It is extremely important to first talk about Sterile Conditions and Tools before cloning. Every surface must be cleaned with some sort of Bleach or Physan 20 and every tool that you use must be also cleaned with Isopropyl Alcohol or something of the like. Sanitary Conditions are very important to have 100% Success Rates.

It is also very important to take your cuttings from perfect healthy MOMS. Perfect healthy rooted cuttings come from perfect healthy MOMS. If you MOMS are unhealthy, it would be best to bring them back to full health before taking your precious cuttings.

Lets start out talking about cloning in Rockwool because I believe that more people use this method. When I clone in Rockwool, I use Grodan 1.5" Mini-Blocks. My first step is to label each Mini-Block with the corresponding cutting that is going to be put into the Mini-Block.

First I start with a clear light cover from a 60 watt CFL from home depot and wash it off with a bleach and water solution and put it aside. After that, I take a sterile container and I soak the 1.5 inch Grodan Mini-Blocks for 1 hour in a solution of:

4 mL General Hydroponics Flora Series Micro
6 mL General Hydroponics Flora Series Bloom
10 mL Technaflora Thrive Alive B-1 (RED)
ALL THESE RATES ARE PER GALLON OF WATER AND THE SOLUTION IS PH'D TO 5.8


After the Mini-Blocks soak in the solution, I slightly drain just a little bit of the solution by very slightly squeezing the Mini-Block which drains 5% of solution.


Lets take this time to talk about how I come up with exact percentages of solution drained. The average of my completely soaked Mini-Block weighs 67.3 grams. When I slightly drain the cube, it weighs 64.3 grams. Using a scale to fine tune your technique, adds consistency to taking your cuttings throughout your life. When you get used to using a scale for a while, you may start to become more familiar with how weights feel and then you won't need to use a scale anymore. An accurate calibrated scale will never lie to you.

After 5% of solution is drained from the Mini-Block, I take my cuttings from a Perfectly Heathy MOM and cut off the lower leaves while keeping the top leaves in tact. Then I take a 45 degree cut about 1/4 to 1/2 inch below the point where I cut off a leaf. This is what it looks like when I've made my cuts. Notice the 2 points on the stem from where I cut off the 2 leaves. These 2 point will be placed in the cube and that will be 2 more points where solution can have contact with the inside of the stem as well as the main diagonal cut that I made on the stem.


If the cutting has any big leaves on it, I trim the leaves so the plants can worry more about growing roots instead of saving big leaves.

Please note, I need to get some new pictures to replace these ones that came from flowering plants.

Now I just slide it down into the cube and go pretty close to the bottom of the cube without being able to see it touch the bottom though. I make sure that the points where I cut off the leaves completely make there way into the cube.

I take the rest of my cuttings and put them onto my light cover and make sure that all the cubes are touching. I can fit up to 18 cuttings on this clear light cover.
Insert Picture

Finally, I place the clear tray into a Propagation Tray & Dome that contains holes on the dome that can be open or closed. I make sure that I close the vents for the first 24-36 hours. I don't always let the cubes touch their neighbors. If I do space the cubes more apart, some of them tend to dry out faster than others so I have to keep a closer eye on each cube.

After 24-36 hours, I lift up the entire dome for 3-5 minutes and wipe off any condensation that collected on the Propagation Dome and let the cuttings get some fresh air. When I put the Dome back on, I keep all the vents open from this point on.

Every 24 hours, I lift up the entire dome for 3-5 minutes and wipe off any condensation that collected on the Propagation Dome and let the cuttings get some fresh air.

After about 5 days, I check the cubes to make sure there's enough solution in the cubes and also check to make sure they are not too heavy. On day 7-9, I am looking for the Mini-Block to weigh close to 48 grams. If your Mini-Block stays too wet, it takes much longer for your cuttings to root. If the cubes start to dry out, I add a little bit more solution but I squeeze out the excess very gently so they are not water logged. The sweet spot to getting fast roots is for the Mini Blocks to get to around 48 grams by day 7-9. I can usually get roots in 7-10 days and after about 7 or 9 days, if your Mini Blocks weigh over 55 grams and don't have a root that you can see from looking at the bottom of your clear tray, you need to keep the Dome off for longer periods of time. I don't like to keep the Dome off for more than 1 hour at a time so if you need more than an hour, do that every 6 hours or so. That's the beauty of these clear trays, you don't need to disturb the roots to see if you have roots, you just look underneath. Try these cloning techniques and watch your success rate go to 100%! Enjoy!



More pictures will be edited into this post.
 
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Snype

Active member
Veteran
More Pictures:
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Last edited:

Snype

Active member
Veteran
Aeroponics
I have to say that I'm pretty excited about my cloning formula! I've done about a couple years of testing on this formula and the results just keep getting better. The last run, I got root nubs formed in 72 hours! Some of you may be skeptical but if you are why not give it a try and see what happens. I hate to be promoting one of the products that I think is the key to my formula but I have to put this information out there.

First I'd like to start out by stating that I do not use any gels or powders to dip the cuttings. I don't dip any cuttings in anything. I also do not score or shave any part of the cutting whatsoever and I think that it is crazy to do that. All that I do is cut the cutting at a 45 degree angle with a pair of scissors and stick it in the EZ Clone 60.

Before I place any cuttings into the cloner, I make sure that the cloner is 100% sterile with Physan 20 or Bleach. If it is not, I give 6 treatments of Erythromycin for 6 days. Once my treatments are done and my cloner is rinsed out real well, I place new sprayers, tubing and neoprene and add 10 Gallons of tap water to the cloner.

After I add 10 Gallons of tap water, I add:

20 mL General Hydroponic FloraMicro
30 mL General Hydroponic FloraBloom
3 mL SuperTHRIVE
0.5 mL Clorox Bleach

I make sure to pH the solution to 6.0 after I add in all the above products.

I can't stress this enough, every single step in my process is very important. There is not one that is more important than the other. It is extremely important that the MOMS that you take your cuts from are in extremely excellent health. Not only that, it's also important that the run-off of your medium is in line. Soil run-off should be 6.0 - 6.5, hydro run-off should be 5.8 - 6.2. Coco should be somewhere in between soil and hydro. It is also important that your mothers are well fed about 5 days before you take the cuttings and the medium is not dry at the time that you take the cuttings.

Once you follow the steps above, I also advise to change out the air pump of the cloner to a size of how ever much solution the cloner holds, your air pump should equal to those liters or gallons per minute. So if you have an EZ Clone 60 which holds 10 Gallons of Solution (37.9 Liter), your air pump should be rated at 19 Liters / Minute. I use 4 air stones with the EZ Clone 60.

Now after all that work, all you have to do is place your cuttings in the cloner and wait a few days to see root nubs appear! I like my solution to be somewhere in the range of 75-82 degrees F. Also remember that some strains are harder to root than others but on easier strains, you can get root nubs in 3 days and roots like this in 10 days or less:

picture.php


And these are the Root Nubs forming on the 3rd day:

picture.php


Don't believe me though, try it for yourself and report back to this thread!!!
 
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JohnQQ

Member
Perhaps I'm a bit overcautious, but would you want to wear nitrile gloves, dip them in isopropyl alcohol, and have a face mask too? If I learned anything from Emergency Medicine, it's to be extra cautious when potential internal contamination of a patient is possible.

I know plants and people are completely different in many respects, but I'm genuinely curious as to what other measures could be taken to prevent hurting the developing clones.

Full disclosure: I'm an overprotective soccer mom when it comes to taking care of my regular plants; triple that for this type of crop :peek:
 

Snype

Active member
Veteran
how old is that mom of the clones?

The MOM that yielded root nubs in 3 days was 40 days old and was a Stardog. The picture in the cloner with all the cuttings and mad roots was a 2.5 month old BYTCH.
 

a4e

New member
thanks for, a quick response, Bro! :) I'll try Woods Rooting Compound and I will write about the results.
Now I am struggling with slime, with your help. I have a lot of slime. Just a huge crop. Perhaps it can be smoked? :)
 

HatchBrew

Active member
Veteran
75-82*f seems alittle hot for aeroponics? like to keep mine 68-72*F.

Have you tried either ranges?
 

Snype

Active member
Veteran
Only .5ml of clorox to 10gal of water?

A full mL can bring 30 Gallons up to 1 PPM Chlorine. We are only talking about 10 gallons of solution and 0.5 mL is plenty.

75-82*f seems alittle hot for aeroponics? like to keep mine 68-72*F.

Have you tried either ranges?

I run mine warmer because my cuttings seem to root a lot faster at these temps. You can go lower as well. Test different temperatures in your conditions and you will find what works for you.
 

Tyga

Active member
Veteran
Gotcha... Wasn't second guessing you just double checking. I used to always use bleach during my run but I forgot the usage rate. I agree on the higher temps def promotes higher rooting.. 78F is plenty warm though I wouldnt go much warmer than that.
 

Snype

Active member
Veteran
Gotcha... Wasn't second guessing you just double checking. I used to always use bleach during my run but I forgot the usage rate. I agree on the higher temps def promotes higher rooting.. 78F is plenty warm though I wouldnt go much warmer than that.

Hard to control temps in the EZ Clone.
 

Crooked8

Well-known member
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Ever since i added more air stones my ez has been beasting roots out for me. Along with a little advice from snype my cloning has gotten much better. Sometimes their recommendation of 1cup of bleach in a 30 site isnt enough. They also took out their lazer lining(aerated tubing) because its supposedly ineffective. I have 4 air stones on 2 dual air pumps in my cloner and it seems to keep temps down and im getting 100% on them. Loving my cloner lately.
 

marmarb

Active member
Right now I'm using 7ml ff grow big 70ml of power clone and 90 ml res clear every 5 days wondering if adding the superthrive will help it root faster took out the air stones though what you think snype
 
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