so, I moved into the new house in March. Covid happened, I am working on refinishing the basement, and now finishing another house to sell. I have been super busy. We alo got 50 broiler chickens, 30 layers, and 25 ducks (to eat the mosquitoes).
I started some plants for the covid cup, but got to busy to keep up and make a flower area for them. So I have six mothers just chilling waiting for me to clone and flower. Now I can. I ordered a 36 x 24 x 52 two room tent, and a 96 x 48 x 72 tent, a 6" inline fan with filter. The smaller tent is too small. I was hoping I could put both mothers and clones in it. Nope, too small. So I’m going to just put the mothers in there. I have to figure out the clones. I have my 1k HPS for flower, I bought a 500 watt equivalent cob for the smaller tent. The fan and filter will be here about the 7th.
I bought 2 55 gallon totes from home depot, cut 3 holes in each and will do DWC. I have a big air pump with 4 stones, 2 in each tub. The mothers are in dirt. Clones go from my turboclone right to the tubs. I have some one who will take any extra clones I have.
I just talked to a buddy of mine, he bought some fem seeds for me to start and send him clones. He’s not good at cloning. But 2 of the five he bought were Jack Herer and wedding cake. Not sure where he bought them, but it could be 6 weeks before they get here.
it’s kinda slow going. Plants are in the tents. I took some clones yesterday. As soon as those have good roots I’ll put three in my hydro tubs. The rest go to a friend. Next month I’ll do the same.
So I have been doing a dumb thing. Tried taking clones twice. They all died… I thought that I didn’t clean out the cloner enough. So i used a bleach solution and cleaned everything. Then I left it for a couple days. During that i got to thinking. Crap, I’m using soft water! So I’m going to try again using un- softened water from the hose.
Last years doing DWC I have found water temp to be critical.
If you are too much above 19-20C (66-67f), it starts causing low oxygen, the liquid cant carry it.
If you have a cool space it might not be a concern.
If it is, consider a chiller or some other clever cooling method.
Well worth it, not had any trouble since i installed a cooler.
So an update on the clones. The new ones are also dying. It was the Temps of the res. I checked and they were at 83f! The stems have clear slime and are dying. Ugh, gotta figure out how to get Temps down…
Oof, 83f is +28C, I had a new thermostat controlling chilling, ended up being 21-23C instead of 18-19C.
Got the rot too, whole rootball fell off when I held it by the stem. Emergency care going on, 50/50 I might get some roots back.
Chlorine seems to be a decent solution, using ORP meter, add and check few times a day. Kick up ORP to 780mV, when it drops to 450, add some more, some people like 650 for long term, havent tried that yet. Will be continuing with it in the future, tired of the brown death.
Calcium hypochlorite (pool shock) is most recommended.
Emergency treat with regular store chlorine (5%, no perfume or soap), straight water in res for the first 2 doses. This is a very hot dosing , ~7ppm, presumes there is a lot of rot to deal with that will consume the chlorine fast. At 0.5ppm free chlorine physarium rot gets killed in 30 seconds
5ml/30l(~7gal) , ph to 6, wait 2 days, repeat dose, wait an hour, flush, add another 5ml.
In DWC you would now add low strength nutes after about an hour, 2-3ml every 2-3 days after that continuously.
For cloner that isn’t too badly infested, you could try 3ml/30l as initial dosage and go to 2ml after that.
Wouldn’t do it for long without the ORP meter, usually when its bad, chlorine can get consumed fast.
Also, you wont burn roots with overdosing.
To combat high cloning rez Temps, I moved the cloner to the floor. That dropped it to about 73f. I took new clones today and left the zipper open just a bit on the door to get a draft on the cloner. Let’s see if it helps!
So, for the last few weeks I have been trying to clean my cloner to get rid of the clear slime killing my clones. No luck yet. In the mean time I switched to peat pellets. I might make it the way I clone now.
After dealing with this slime issue for months, round after round of dead clones, I think I have it working again!
First, the problem. I’m guilty of leaving my clones in the turbokloner for far too long. I moved to a new house, set things up and started growing again. I cleaned my turbokloner with a bleach solution, then took clones. They grew the clear slime and died. Cleaned it many times and ways, same result. I did notice that I would get junk clogging my nozzles every time. I think there are bits of roots in the spray manifold harboring the slime. I can’t take it apart to get them out. I even hooked up my hose directly to it to blow them out. Didn’t work.
Slime solution. After many hours of digging I found three solutions. Get rid of the cloner and use jiffy plugs or Rockwool. Trying that with not much luck. They look half dead.
Make a tea to put in the cloner rez that eats the slime. That looked complicated. Might still try it if my DWC gets slimy.
Ammonia in the rez. This seems to be working fabulously! I put about a quarter cup ammonia to 5 gal of water. It’s been 5 days, no slime, stems are getting calloused with root buds showing! Plain ammonia, no scents.
You have no idea how happy I am! I should have harvested my first round by now!
Side note on the ammonia, it Settles out as a white scum after a little while. A week or so. But, I have small roots and the start of roots on some plants! Its a lot slower now. Before the slime, it took around a week to see roots. Now its over 2 weeks.
So I knew my ph meter was off. I found out it was more than I thought. I bought some calibration solution, and the meter auto calibrates to 4, 7, or 10. Whater its closer to. Now its even worse… but I have a cheaper one that I can change with a tiny screw driver. That one is now right. The end of the week they will be in the totes and off we go!
, DWC is fast, no time consuming, clean and no pests. What strains will you grow? What nutes will you give them? 
