DIY Aero Cloner the EZ-Cloner Replica in 10 Easy Steps!

[Pipedream]

How do I transplant from my aerocloner into 4 in rockwool

Most folks go to hydroton from the cloner. However, the easiest way to do what you want to is to take a knife and cut your cube in half. When doing so just leave a 1/2 inch wide area uncut. Now the cube will open like a book. Gently place the newly rooted clone in the middle and close it up. For the first week or so you may want to put a rubber band loosley around it to hold it closed. After that the roots will spread out and do it on their own. The key word here is "gently". If you keep the cube damp everything will work perfect and the roots will be undamaged.

Hope this helps.

 

[hempathy.inc]

thank you very much for the info I am going to try this on a few today I will let you know how it works

 

[toohighmf]

How do I transplant from my aerocloner into 4 in rockwool

From aero, the minute roots start to emerge, I either use the round macro plugs that are already slit from the center out to the end. I open em up and carefully drop the clone in the plug. Lately I use clonex root riot plugs and soak em in Lucas formula and superthrive with hormex or vita grow rooting solution. Sometimes I add some clonex gel to the mix as well. (can't hurt) I cut them on 1 side from the hole and leave enough room up top to avoid dampening off. I used to transplant when I saw initial callussing and roots popped through in a day or 2. When I see roots, they get food and root stim. If I see any pythium forming I dump a buttload of h2o2 in the cloner and it's gone in 20-30 minutes and roots grow like mad! 36 hours later after the h2 has evaporated, it's Lucas, roots excelurator and sometimes I'll add a high PK boost then when I transplant to a cube I first use a clearing solution like clearex or florakleen to leach the lime content from the cubes. (I think the lime causes the ph fluctuations, so I soak em for 30 min in that, then I flush all that crap out and drain the cubes/slabs by stacking them until their near dry, then I resoak in either supernats rw conditioner at 5.0 to 5.5 for another hour and check the ph. If it rises over 6, I bring it back down to 5.5 and wait another hour. If it stays between 5.5 and 6, I stack em again and get em a 1/4 full and transplant. I also add Roots excelurator and get roots out the bottom in 24-48 hours. I keep the PH in the low 6's and only apply enough Lucas RE , a mil/gal of AN revive and superthrive to keep them from drying out the first few days and within a week I have a beard at the bottom of each cube and most my strains will take 1000ppms right out the gate and LOVE it. Growth rates are amazing and overall health is very good. I'm not a big AN fan after working for them, but I still like revive, big bud, OD, barricade, CBB, and VHO, though it's not really needed, and I only have vho and revive. Anyway, back to cloning/transplanting from aero.. If you transplant into soaking wet cubes your going to have sluggish and defic'd plants that also tend to stunt
growth. I've been transplanting like this for years and yeah, I lose a couple to dampening off, but the majority grow perfectly and uniform. I had 2 stunted girls out of a LOT of cuts this last run.. You gotta know what your plants need and have the perfect enviro. No shortcuts, don't chinse on your tools, ferts, additives, and maintain a schedule that your cuts get use to and anyone can clone like a champ!

I haven't started on my new 256 site aero cloner with external pumps, but hopefully tomorrow my ABS top for my grotek 70 gallon square res will be cnc'd tomorrow. I just hope I can find 256 2" neoprenes locally and those jello shot inserts, as well as 20-30 ez clone 360 sprayers. Pics inbound hopefully tomorrow. I don't understand why nobody manufactures bigger units for commercial ag. Oh well, I have the perfect res, a decent pump, plenty of air pumps n stones, the cnc'd lid will be the most expensive part of this cloner. I may just get a 2" holesaw or 2 and cut it myself. $170 bucks for a pre fab lid vs $32 for the ABS cut to 31x31 and 2 $25 dollar holesaws might be the ticket. I just have a lot on my plate right now and it sure would be nice to just get it cut perfectly so I can getter done quick and running. I looked at a 110g res to try a 350+ site cloner, but I'm gonna try this one first. If it works well, I have another 70g grotek res to build another one.
Question.. What size PVC pipe should I use??? I'm thinking half inch for such a big pump, and I can use a threaded 1/2" adapter to make things easier on myself or should I go with 3/8 to up the pressure a bit?

 

[onegreenday]

Excellent tips. thanks a lot.

 

[DeebeeAhhSee]

Mine won't even get bumps on them. I added an oxygen pump and line to the water. Arghh!

 

[Pipedream]

DeebeeAhhSee - Temperature of the water? System fully cleaned, even the inside of the pump? Got some CFL's up top? That's all it should take assuming your cuts were growing healthy when you took them.

 

[bens lab]

Excellent guide, thanks.

I converted a 10 gallon tub into a 15 site aero cloner with pretty much 100% success rate so far. I keep an aquarium heater in there wired to a habistat thermometer which keeps the water at 72. Pluged it all into a mechanical timer and ran it at 15/15 on/off, and also a 30w floro for 18/6 lighting.

Everything seems to root in about a week perfectly, one less thing to worry about, loving it.

 

[need4weed]

Hey guys i made an aero cloner and i am running it for the first time, problem is that after 7 days and no roots, some clones are starting to look a bit worse for wear.
i never used any rooting gel or powders i just cut and put into cloner.
I ph'd the water to 5.8 and added a cap full of h2o2, the misters are running 24/7.
I dont know what water temps are but it is not cool or warm to the touch, feels just nice.
Pleeeeeeease help

 

[moses224]

U dont need gel or powder but you should add a rooting mix to water clonex makes one that i use.

 

[need4weed]

I dont think i will be able to get to a shop this week! does that meen that they wont root at all? also what do you think is causing the spots on the leaves?

 

[Pipedream]

need4weed - I might be off base here but looking at your pic's I make two observations.....One, those cuts have alot of foilage on them. With no root system to support their needs you're asking a bit much. I'd get rid of half of your fans and might even cut some of the remaining leaves in half. Two, looks to me as though those cuts came from a plant that was already in flower or just about there. If that's the case, all rules are off as far as how long it will take roots to develope. The plant first has to revert into a vegetative state before it can even think of growing roots. It can easily take a few weeks. Lastly, water temps are key to making this work. You can pick up a thermometer at just about any Dollar Store and really should get one. JMHO Good Luck, PD

 

[10k]

I'm very happy and proud to see so many growers worldwide doing aero cloning instead of the old conventional methods...but I'm really kinda disappointed that people are still trying to build the old "pumps and sprayers" (water pumping style) cloner tubs, because they just don't work out very well for a lot of the folks who attempt building their own. Imnsho, most of you would be so much better off just building a bubbler style "cheapo-aero" (google it) type cloner instead.

The number one thing that causes failures in the water pumping style cloners is the high temperatures the water pump causes in the tubs. This is why I promoted the cheapo-aero so heavily back at weedbase and overgrow. It was named "cheapo-aero" because its so much cheaper than these "pump style" cloners and wayyyyy more successful in the long run !

The number two cause of failures in either style of cloners is people putting nutes and other crap in their water. Just use tap water and change it daily for the first few days. You can pH it down to @ 5.5 with phosphoric acid and THAT is about all the 'P' nutrition any cutting will need once it begins showing some root bumps (callous) on the stems.

Why change the water some will ask...
Tap water has a slight trace amount of chlorine in it. In this case the chlorine will HELP keep the cuttings sanitary and avoid them from forming any slime. BTW... cover the tubs so light can't get in and you'll have much more success avoiding the slime failure rates.

The number three cause of failures (although some would argue tied for number one) in either style of aero cloners is "lighting"....too damn much lighting...
Folks who put their cloners close under their fluorescent fixtures are going to have failed clones and excessive yellowing starting from the lowest leaves working upwards. Keep the damn flo fixture a foot or better yet two feet away from the cuttings !

This has to be the most overlooked and most dismissed concern about aero cloning as the old school conventional wisdom about clone lighting always seems to rear its fugly head making people think they need to have close intense lighting on the cuttings. Don't forget that the poor little cuttings don't have any roots yet, so please don't force them to devote any of their energy to anything other than making some roots.

Close lighting causes the cutting to spend too much of it's energy on photosynthesis, thus causing them to translocate nutrition from their foliage since they dont have a root system yet.
The cuttings need to devote their energy to more important things at the moment, the first thing being healing their wounds where they've been cut and hopefully scarified by forming a callous over the wound(s)... from that calloused area comes the new root growth.

hth,
10k

 

[onegreenday]

I had some success with this style but quite a few flopped & died within hours.

I read that a cut should be placed right in water and out of water for 30 seconds can kill them.

Is that true? Also my cuts were out of the water & up in the airspace,
so now I'll try in the water and see if it's better.

Better in the water or out?
what's the poll say?
thanks.

 

[Saint Cannabis]

Fogloner still the best aero for me

Fogloner still the best aero for me

I've never had to worry about pHing my water or monitoring my temps. I've never put any nutes or clone solution/gel in the water. I had to pour a little water in once or twice a week to compensate for small amounts of evaporation and cutting utilization but I only changed the water out completely once (last week) since i first built the fogloner around Halloween '08. I did this mainly because i had a problem with my bonsai-mums dying and had no clones going in (waiting for new mums to grow up) to replace the last course of rooted clones being put into the flower chamber. I wanted to clean out all the bits of floating spray-paint chips that came off of the lid to my old bubble cloner i was using to elevate the mist heads inside the fogloner more closely to the cuttings as well as cleaning some of the algae from inside the fogloner and the open-cell foam i use to hold the cuttings in the holes. It's all low-tec (except for the fog-heads) and very cheaply made.
I know i've posted most of this info before, but i've found a link to the foggers of which i have 4 (using two at a time). They are the first one listed at the link above but the ones i got didn't have the replacement disc and tool, but i can't complain when i got mine for less than $13 for the first two and about $11 for the second two (on clearance at local grocery store just before Halloween).
Obviously there are many things i did not do to keep things "clean and sterile" but that just goes to show you how well the fogloner works. I've only had cuttings fail when i let the water level get too low for the discs to make the fog. This only happened a couple of times and even then, cuttings gone totally flat-limp from hours without water have bounced right back shortly after pouring in more water. I've taken cuttings from anywhere on the mother from "perfect" new growth to old woody stems from bonsai shape-pruning and they all root. I even recently broke a couple of branches of a cherry-tomato plant i was trans-planting outside and i just clipped the end off and leisurely strolled into the house and back to my cloner and stuck them in. I did not spray them or immerse the stems in water before putting them in the cloner and these were just the end of fairly mature branches, not the succors you would would normally take for a cutting. The stem now has several large 'root nubs' at the end of both 'cuttings' after a little over a week. I probably won't even keep these as i have plenty of tomato plants but its just part of my ongoing "tests" of the limits of the fogloner. Someday, when i'm not renting from my in-laws, i may build a closet grow and get one of those 12-head ultrasonic foggers and teflon-coated discs to test the limits of flowering.

 

[need4weed]

pipedream, thanks for the response i will trim back a few leaves and try to get a thermometer if i can get home from work early. i have had success before with clones in early flower using a bubbler just not used an aero b4

 

[onegreenday]

nice SC that fog is cool & I like the flowering idea.
your roots look different than bubble cloner roots.
bubble roots seem to grow longer.
your roots look like spikes.

 

[Saint Cannabis]

In my experience the bubble cloner tends to make longer water roots and the aero-type cloners get roots branching and spreading much more quickly. I'm pretty rough with my plants... I don't worry too much about things like sanitation or breaking roots during transplanting and i've had no problems with my fogloner. The fogloner, in my opinion, is about as cheap as buying air pumps and stones and tubing (especially around Halloween). The electricity usage is about the same and it's even quieter than quietest air pump i could find (although the stone probably makes more noise than the pump). Also the ultrasonic transducer-discs on the foggers warm and sterilize the water (but not the container) without over-heating the water. All this and even quicker more consistent root growth from a wider range of cuttings. Why are people still using bubblers?

P.S. I think i could get even better vigor if i use a slight bit of veg nuts in the water, but i won't do that until i replace the non-teflon coated discs with teflon. Then of course i'll have to start res changes and make a float for the foggers so the change isn't as often or wasteful... <sigh>

 

[Saint Cannabis]

nice SC that fog is cool & I like the flowering idea.
your roots look different than bubble cloner roots.
bubble roots seem to grow longer.
your roots look like spikes.

Yea i don't leave them in there very long and i take fairly small cuttings, although i plan increasing the average size of my cuttings now that i have a little experience. Average time between taking a cutting and putting her into flower chamber is less than two weeks. You can't see half of the roots in that pic and the lighting is off cause of the cheap red/blue LED panels used. They have alot of branches off of branches. Sometimes the roots get really long, really fast.

 

[onegreenday]

thanks SC, some good tips. I'll try that fogger thingy soon.
perhaps the sonic vibrations help rooting.

right now i'm trying to root a cutting in full strength FN-grow
in the bubble cloner. EDIT: I dumped this after 7 days nothing showing'
day 4 and it's still turgid so perhaps it will form roots
we'll see.

 

[kp^]

KingRalph,

Wanted to say THANK YOU! for sharing this knowledge!