It is a DIY cloner. Runs on a 400GPH sub through 14 misters and the mist is very fine. I have read that an airstone isn’t required in this kind of setup because the splashing and falling of water should provide enough aeration plus you run the risk of adding bacteria to the rez.
Dome has air vents yes its a bit larger than the rez itself so lets in a little bit of air. Apparently humidity is less important in these kinds of systems but it didn’t seem right leaving them naked.
Fingers crossed it’s just a stubborn strain and/or my low temps are just slowing it down a bit.
yes for misters you won’t need it, they got lots of oxygen sitting exposed already. the only part i’m confused about is the purpling. i think they could benefit from some air exchange tho with vent holes, or removing the dome a couple times a day or something
Your light could be too close. If a cutting gets too much light it will try to grow instead of producing roots. I was having issues with my EZcloner and backing off the light helped reduce rooting by a few days (from about 10 to 7 days).
Not even close to panic time. The cuts still look OK in these pics.
Careful not to have the lights to close or the plants will attempt to grow without roots.
If too much more time goes by and they start looking weak, take another 3-5 mm off of the bottom of the cut stem so that it can start again with fresh cells.
I don’t use a light for clones… I just set them so they can sense the light from the veg area… don’t want any photosynthesis going on… I let them be until dead or almost dead.
Ok so I’m going to bump the lights up a bit tonight. I turned the two T8s off and just left the CFL on for a night last week but they really looked depressed the next day so I turned em back on.
For increasing temps I have limited options since this is a basement. The reservoir has 14gal of water in it so it’s very heavy. When I first set this up I considered putting some foam insulation under the rez but I decided not to in favor of low temps. Every couple days I add about a half gallon of really hot tap water and it will raise the rez temps to about 70F for 8-10hrs before cooling down. But the surrounding area is very cool right now, usually around 62F. This 4x4 veg room has no front door so maybe adding some foam and building up a curtain around it might trap some heat in.
I don’t like to make too many changes at once, because you never know what it was that worked.
And more on topic of the original thread. The other day I got a free 4 foot fluoro fixture that came with two 40w Gro-Lux wide spectrum tubes from someone who bought them and thought “they put off a strange hue light I don’t like them” I had no idea they were Gro-Lux until I got them home and looked at the tubes. That’s a big win for the veg room!
The humidity is quite low in my basement despite having a flower room with 1000w HPS running right next door to it, so I thought the humidity dome would help it but I must say, there is always this pungent odour coming from the dome when I remove it that goes away after a few minutes of being off. At this point I’m kinda scared to remove it since they’re all still alive but I’m really worried it might be hurting them.
I went ahead and removed my 2x24" soft whites and replaced them with 2x48" Gro-Lux Wide Spectrum tubes and brought the lights up quite a bit they’re about 3 feet above the clones now. I kept the 6500k CFL because im hoping that high Kelvin light will help things along.
To raise the room temp I added a curtain to the door made of foam underlay hopefully that will help raise the ambient a bit. The rez temps I’m thinking could be increased by wrapping a few layers of insulation around the outside of the rez.
I did a few things tonight so I think I’ll let this be for a few days and see if things improve or get worse.
Could be a coincidence, but it seemed quite strange to me that the very next day I had this much improvement. The temps didn’t really change so if anything helped it was moving the lights up/switching to grow spectrum
Thanks as always, this should be a grow journal at this point!
All my cuts have roots now, 100% rooted. I was skeptical of LPA cloners and these claims of 95%+ success rates but I’m nothing more than a handy man with a general understanding of hydroponics with a poor track record of rooting clones, and I got results. Not in 5 days some people report but maybe the strain I’m growing or the temperatures could have sped things up.
I built this entire system, including the hormones and rooting enhancers, for less than $60CAD.
They certainly aren’t looking very healthy above deck though:
The yellowing and wilting seems normal since all the energy is going to rooting, but it is also quite cold (17C) so I’m wondering if that is causing the wilting.
The adults these came from all have this trait but they didn’t show this purpling this early. I’m assuming they just want food. I’m going to add some veg nutrient to the reservoir maybe tomorrow night because I’m sure they’re hungry at this point (2 weeks since cut). I don’t have any cal-mg on hand and the hydro store charges an arm and a leg so I’m hoping the purpling isn’t a cal/mg deficiency because that means my adults are probably having the same issues. Fingers crossed it’s just genetics.
