[Scottish Research]

AK,

What's your average time frame for your cuttings to be ready using your method. I understand that not all cuttings move at the same pace.

What is your average success rate?

I found a great deal on an EZ Clone machine. Just not sure if I really want to build one of these right now.

Those DM nutrients are really inexpensive which is good news.

I'm currently just cloning using RO water with KLN and Pro Tekt 1 tsp each per gallon.

How much bleach do you use when cleaning?

Thanks for the in-depth posts.

R.Fortune

[aerokrafter]

- R Fortune

First thank you for all of the thoughtful questions. They have helped me bring out extra details that further explains things. I'm sure the peanut gallery is appreciative as well. We seem to have a pretty good conversation goin here - tho all you lurkers out there are welcome to join in!

It normally takes 7 - 10 days for roots to start. 14 to 21 days and they are ready to plant - unless you follow my method where vegging in done in the cloner. Success rate is over 95%. Some strains take longer - seen some go over 28 days to root. I don't like things in the cloner past 45 days total.

I use a "healthy splash" of bleach in a 5 gallon bucket. You should be able to smell it. Make sure you rinse everything very well. Pucks are the problem here - the neoprene ones melt if left in bleach - and you really don't want to soak them very long anyways. Bleach left in the pucks does a strange thing - the cutting grows roots into the puck, not out the bottom of the stem. I replace pucks after 4-5 rounds - much cheaper than total cloner failure.

The commercial aerocloners are actually one of the few areas where I say just buy it. I rec the Turbo Cloner. It's really the second generation EZ Cloner. The same guy designed them both and the TC fixes many small issues with the EZ.

That being said, one the great things about the hobby, is that you find yourself building all kinds of interesting things. A trip through Casa DePot or any store for that matter, sends my mind racing thinking of how I could repurpose odd things.

When you build things, even if they fail, you gain a greater understanding that will allow you to look at commercial built systems and see what will work for you. I hand built a version first of all the commercial equipment I now use. Along with many fun experiments along the way.

Here are my veggers - a step I now skip


A hand built cloner with an Ice Probe chiller:


Here's my attempt to "Super Charge" an AeroFlo:


BTW - It looked way cooler than it worked.

If you are interested, there are more pix of these and other things in my hand built experiments album.

Thanx Again and Best of Luck!

-AK

[wizoo]

reading your lines gets better with every page aerokrafter!
your detailed contributions are very much appreciated and i'm so glad i found this one.
thanks again for your time and love you put into this helpful report!

/me now back to lurking & learning

[ThePizzaMan]

Yeah...my next upgrade is a 48 site Turbo Klone! My 21 site DIY works...but its so getto..i like everything in my room to be proper if that makes any sense. I mean..you are going to have this equipment for many years...so its not as bad as some make it out to be price wise.

Can't wait to see some purse candy filling out!

Cheers

TPM

[aerokrafter]

-wizoo

Thanx for the kind words. I plan to do a thread like this only once. It does take a while to put these posts together and your encouragement is appreciated.

-TPM

Good choice on the TK. You won't regret it. I understand exactly what you mean by a proper room. I always call this a hobby, but if you want to take your success to the next level - think like a pro. The cost of using quality equipment is negligable in the big picture. Sides - when something breaks, its great to just get something off the shelf and be done with it vs more super glue, duct tape and bathroom caulk.

Sorry, I have one more diatribe on nutes to do. But I promise a 14 day update on GDP tommorrow.

-AK

[Scottish Research]

It looks like Res temps in the DIY cloner could be an ongoing issue especially during warmer months. Since we already have enough things to worry about it makes sense to get one of these. The prices are set. Best to look local in order to avoid the costly shipping charge is that is a concern.

Thanks AK!

R.Fortune

[aerokrafter]

-R Fortune

That old pic of my DIY cloner with a chiller in it, was in a room over 90 degrees ambient. It worked, but in my experience its cheaper to control the environment. I have no problem with my current cloners with ambient at 80 degrees. If it gets above this, you can use hydroguard, h2o2, or any antifungal. Growth will be dramatically slowed, but they will live. When the cloner hits 90 degrees, you are in trouble. Cycling 2 liter pop bottle ice cubes in the res can get you through an emergency, but it would be a difficult solution long term.

-AK

[Scottish Research]

AK,

That's good to know. So 80 is about max. The lower the temp the higher the oxygen content.

I did not know that H202 will slow down growth. You could also use H202 instead of bleach to clean your cloner.

We have really high heat and humidity here, starting now apparently. The pollen is just killing me.

I got a 12k portable air conditioner for the room. I'm really concerned about the humidity. Goal is to keep it at 50% or below in flowering area.

Can't wait to see your updated pics. Really interested in the Grand Doggy Purps!

R.Fortune

[aerokrafter]

AeroFlo Tip n Trix Warning!

Nutes - Blooming


Here is where the road divides between Aero and all other hydro methods. If you are doing DWC, NFT or any varient of these, my numbers here WILL NOT WORK for you. I'm sure there are plenty of ideas that can be adapted - just keep in mind that I'm writing this from the aero perspective. This knowledge is rare and sometimes counterintuitive to what you may know from the rest of the wet growing world.

Differences:

Nute Load - less is more:
Regular Hydro performs better than dirt because the dirt is replaced with nutrient solution. The roots are directly exposed to the nutrients in solution with reduced buffering action from dirt. This reduces the "work" the plant has to do to get what it needs to grow. So in hydro the amount of nutrients needed is less than dirt.

In aero we take the next step. Effectively removing the solution and feeding by air. Its true we are using small water droplets to do this, but the result is the same. Aero needs only 1/4 to 1/3 of the nute concentration of hydro methods.

Nute Profile:
Just as with concentrations, the ratios of macro/micro nutrient uptake is different. Some things are more easily absorbed, others less so. It seems that K is the biggest problem. Aero needs a higher proportion.

Speed:
There is nothing faster period. The safety is off and governer is eliminated. A sports car is a thing of beauty in the hands of a driver - but an ugly twisted pile around a tree in the wrong ones. Things happen so fast, you must anticipate every corner, nail the apex, and pick your exit line for next one.

The explosive growth and faster finish times(you can trim off 3-5 days of expected bloom time) are balanced by the fact that you can easily lose the whole grow just as fast.

Just like a sports car, the level of maintainance is much higher as well. If you are going to "stear the grow", you better know where you have been and where you are going. This means looking at your plants every day. Every day you skip is like taking your hands off the wheel, and eyes off the road to text. You might get away with it, but look out for that parked semi!

Wanna take a Ride?

I thought so - Here we go!


Nute Brands I have tried:

GH/Lucas Formula

I was hanging around CW at the time when Lucas developed his now famous formula for DWC 0-8-16. That is in ml/gallon using GH's 3 part grow, micro, and bloom. I was experimenting with bubbling buckets at the time, while still keeping my tea grown organics rolling. I got great results, but my dirt buds still consistently were a notch better quality. Went from buckets to NFT still using Lucas, lots of big buddage, but the organic little tea train that could rocked almost every strain better. Always looking to improve, I excitedly got my first aeroflo, dumped in the nutes I was so familiar with, and eagerly waited for the lights to turn on the next day. The sight of all of my pretty clones flopped over dead stings to this day. The Lucas formula works out to a Tds of about 1380. It wasn't until later that I discovered that this is 4X higher than the plants can take. So next I moved on to 0-6-9, and then 0-3-6. I started getting decent growth, but had a multitude of deficient problems. The worst being Mg. Epsom salts to the rescue! This helped, but every run was a game of whack-a-mole - the only consistent results were inconsistency.

The great thing about GH nutes is that you can find out exactly what is in them. In fact there are several spreadsheet applications that let you formulate exact nute profiles. Some of the best growers in the game use these nutes for exactly this reason. For me to get all the right stuff in the mix means altering the recipe throughout the grow. This leads to pH instability and lockout that doesn't allow for maximum performance.

I was tired of mediocre results. I was sick of learning from my mistakes. It was time to learn from the mistakes of others! After extensive searches, I found several lines of pursuit. Let me tell you, there is not a whole lot of usable information out there, even less back in the day. There are some arcane recipes with dozens of ingredients, a few outright frauds, and manufacturer claims that are just plain wrong. The only well documented grow with an aeroflo was Heath Robinson's grow of Green Giant x Rosetta Stone using Ionic Nutes. Heath is a legendary experimenter, and using my bud Soul's genetics to boot - I was stoked!


Ionic Nutes

These are the generic nutes of the hydro world - a lot of warehouses still depend on them. They are cheap, but a consistent quality nute. In my experience with them, I started out around 500 ppm, got decent growth, and eliminated several problems I had with my GH trials. Still tho, after 6 runs, my dirt tea buds were better.


AN Nutes

I'm mixing up the timeline, but I think now in this narrative is a good time to talk about these. Last year I dedicated 4 runs to try to find a workable formula for a friend that loves them in coco. Everything ended up in the compost pile. It's damn near impossible to keep the pH stable. My first run had an out of the blue 4 point pH crash on day 26 that insta-killed the run. Next attempt I dropped all the additives except Big Bud and Bud Candy. I made it through a 3.1 crash and a 8.9 blowout. At harvest I had marble sized, crumbly, unsmokeable crap. So next I tried just straight sensi a/b with my adds - day 29 twigification from Ph drop. Final attempt, may as well go for broke and upgrade to connoisseur with no additives. I rode this wobbly dog all the way home to a chemical stinking shit pile of a harvest. I talked to a bunch of their "experts" throughout this process, they had no answer on their talk sheet, and finally just gave up and accused me of lying.

I gave my friend $2,000 worth of leftover hypenutes, said "Merry Christmas and stay in coco!" He was so thrilled to get them, but not as much as I was to get rid of them. 'nuff said


What I work with now - DM/GH

I started using Dutch Master K+ very early in my aeroflo path as a way to deal with K-def. Aero is very tough on leaves because they become the buffer that you left behind when you stick the roots in the air. It's rare to see finished bud shots with pristene leaves in aero. Every little mistake you make is literally etched into every leaf. It seems that those air roots need a higher concentration of K to stabilize several nutrient uptake pathways - in other words K is both a nutrient and a buffer in this situation. The only way I have ever completely eliminated tip burn is to INCREASE the K. This seems counterintuitive when you think about burn, but K seems to be regulating how other nutes are used - increasing uptake rates by some, and decreasing others. That's the hypothesis, the important part is that it works!

I hate fake science mumbo jumbo marketing and the DM guys are certainly pushing it. They started out as a small ozzy company that blatently applied vegetable, fruit and ornamental tech to weed. This peeved many powers that be, resulting in a massive recall of their best selling product Super Bud, for containing Paclobutrazol - an ornamental only chemical that was suspected of being carcinogenic. Short story - DM lines get pulled off the shelf and remaining bottles of Superbud sell for over $800 a liter on the black market. DM strikes back by reformulating their base nutes into the gold line. Their marketing shifts from sciencebabble to sciencebabble+slutty bitches. At this point I'm not biting.

Trying to find a solution to pH stability, I kept hearing snippets about DM fixing this problem. I gave it a shot at 1/3 their suggested concentration. For the pH, it was like stepping off the corkscrew roller coaster, onto a nice sedate ferris wheel. You still go up and down, but at a much less frightening pace. The gold line simplified my recipe as well. I no longer needed to add Cal-mag or K+ to get Ca and K in my target concentration. These are the base nutes I use to this day. DM finally dropped the sluts, reduced the babble level, and co-opted a university to do testing. They never regained marketshare and are often relegated to a lonely shelf in the back of the hydro store.

Paclobutrazol? It's now in over a dozen products and its role as a carcinogen largely disproven.


Additives:

I have used dozens of them over the years. Instead of concentrating on how they worked, I will talk about the ones I use.

Kool Bloom
Its a very clean, highly soluble, highly concentrated PK booster. You will find this additive in many recipes across many grow methods for a reason, its one of the best ones out there.

Flouralicious
To get that organic taste, you need all those partial metabolites from biotic sources. That fine flavor actually comes from impurities. If you want the cleanest smoke with the whitest ash, straight synthetics is the way to go. From the start, I have been in competition with my tea-dirt buds for complex flavor and aromas. This additive evens the playing field. Its brewed, strained, and autoclaved to be safe in the spray lines. Be careful, the bottle can get easily infected with critters. Keep it closed and don't buy big bottles.

Silica and Zone
Basic root zone protection. I bump the concentration in hot weather. I have peaked res temps at over 80 degrees with no problem with these. I've used others that work to various degrees, but with this stuff, I don't worry much about moderate heat. I used to keep drop in chillers in every res all the time. Now they get drug out of the attic for rare emergencies. That's a $1700 piece of equipment you won't need if you use this stuff.


Here's what I use:




Base Formula for start up and res changes:

After all that, it comes down to this:

Fill the 40 gallon res with RO water and add (in ml):

70 pH down
50 Silica
50 Zone
130 DM Gold A
130 DM Gold B

The order is important. Make sure the pump is running and you have topped off with RO water. If you see a milky precipitate on the bottom of the res, that would be your calcium and it MAY go back into solution. Next time follow the order and take a little pause between adding nutes.

This gives me around 450 ppm and a pH of around 5.8.

Our target zones are 5.3 - 6.3 for pH, and 420 - 480 ppm. These change with strain knowledge.

Through the course of the run, we want the pH to drift through as much of this range as possible. Different macro and micro nutrients are absorbed at different pHs. There are nute availibity charts floating all over the net - beware I have seen a couple mislabeled and wrong. Doublecheck

Root masses will retain some nutrients. The bigger the roots, the more the nute drag. Starting fresh this isn't a big deal, but later in the grow, must be accounted for.


Adjustments, Additives and Res Changes:

Over time, the plants remove nutrients and add waste to the solution. To compensate we have to add those nutes back. In addition, the plants change what they absorb throughout the course of the run, so the menu changes with them.

The ppm meter is really just a measure of conductivity. It tells you how ionically active the solution is - nothing more. There is no way of knowing from this what is REALLY in the res. The only solution to the problem is to periodically change out the res. I have experimented the full range from weekly res changes to no res change ever. I found the optimum res life to be 2 weeks. There was no difference between weekly and biweekly res changes. At 3 week res changes and beyond, results tail off to 85% effectiveness with no res change at all.


Additives over time

For the first 2 weeks I use no additives only AB addbacks

weeks 3 - 4 I start to add a light flavor and PK boost in addition to AB addbacks. Over the course of this time, my target is to add 2 doses of 2 teaspoons Kool Bloom, and at least 1 dose of 50 ml Flouralicious.

weeks 5 - 6 I bump to 3 doses KB and 2 FL + AB addbacks

weeks 7 - 8 2 doses KB and 3 FL + AB addbacks

week 9 flush

This is my base setup and is adjusted with strain knowledge.


Riding the wave and shooting ducks

So our goal is to monitor Tds and Ph throughout the grow. Reading the changes in the numbers and the plants overall "happiness" as we go.

So how do we react to what we see? Any time you add anything to the res, it can affect BOTH pH and Tds. By creatively using our "tool" additives, we can solve multiple problems with one shot.

Here are some rules of thumb for all the things we are using. Keep in mind that when the plants are actively eating, these numbers slide around a little. These rules will keep you out trouble. Remember less is more. 10 ml in 40 gallons sounds like homeopathic dilutions, but a drop in the bucket is all it takes sometimes.


20 ml A / 20 ml B Addback results in:

+45 ppm
very slight decrease in pH

This is my first response to dropping ppm. When the plants are growing at full speed this number drifts down. Fresh starts range higher.



10 ml pH down results in:

- .2 pH
slight increase in ppm

pH down is buffered which means that at the ends of our acceptable range its effectiveness changes. Be careful - a little goes a long long ways.



10 ml pH up results in:

+.3 pH
slight increase in ppm
Once again buffered and be careful.


2 teaspoon dose of Kool Bloom results in:

+20 ppm
-.2 pH



50 ml Flouralicious results in:

+10 ppm
+.2 pH


With these numbers it becomes a sort of dance with the plants. They take a step and eat. You lead them and they respond back.

Here's a week 3-4 data sheet, where you can see the dance in action. This is my Sour Bubba Kush. It likes low pHs and low nutes.



You can see the interplay to keep things in check.

This may all seem overwelming. I have dumped a big pile of data I know. It's a little rough around the edges, but all you need to get started is there. Please learn from my mistakes - my only motivation to sit here and type this out is the pain I went through banging my head while crashing the AeroFlo through many experiments.

So my only remaining question is:

Wanna Drive Really Fast?



And those my friends are the hard won secrets to AeroFlo bloom nutes.



Wow, that was a long brain dump. If you're still here - thanx for reading. I gotta get that GDP update done next.



As always, your questions and comments are welcome

-AK

[aerokrafter]

Update Day 14 Bloom - Finally!

Unit Shot:


As you can see, the explosive growth phase has begun!

Here's our shoot we have been watching:



Here's the data sheet for the first 14 days:



Not a whole lot goin on here as expected. I started this run with a pH experiment that went off the rails and needed to be fixed, hence the kurfluffel at the start.

All in all, things look good. I'm guessing I'm 2-3 days away from the next big step - the trellis.

sorry for the sparse post, I'm a lil wiped from pecking out that last post.

-AK