Here’s my favorite cheap DIY aero cloner I’ve come across, made by fellow OG member @Purple-N-Hairy
I like that it’s so cheap and easy to build, and that you can just throw away the manifold (tube) and replace it once it gets too old or icky.
In my experience, aero cloners work great until they start getting older and/or you get pathogen issues. Then once that happens cuts stopped rooting or take forever. Usually, changing out the pump and manifold took care of the issues, mostly.
I recently came across this cleaning procotol. We’ll see how it works long term…
I actually moved away from aero cloners after getting sick of fighting pathogen issues. I have 3 old cloners just collecting dust. They had issues with the “slime” (which afaik is a Cyanobacteria) and everything stopped rooting no matter how I disinfected.
Then I recently bought a ez-cloner from a buddy who only used it a handful of times and I’ve been trying that out again. But it’s giving me issues already (with some type of pathogen I think. A big reason I usually never buy used hydro equipment… lol). So I have my important clones rooting in plugs under a dome (which always works for me).
I’m going to try removing the back plate of the pump like recommended on that link above, and do a full disinfection of every little nook & cranny. We’ll see what happens.