What is your cloning environment?

[Cobra50]

Last year I made a cloning box that was strictly stand alone. Before that, I had a plexiglass box inside my veg chamber. It had gotten to be too much of a drain on my veg cabinet because a few years ago, when my son met the woman that will become his wife this year (I already call her his wife) and I needed to increase my yield by 33%.

The new clone box just what I needed. I used a reflector I had once used in my flower room but created too much heat. I wired up a lamp socket on a conduit box so I could use a CFL bulb. It took a few different bulbs, but I finally settled on a 65W daylight (color: 5000k). Suddenly, my cloning times dropped from 14-18 days to 10-12 days and stayed that way until the flyin’ fuckers showed me just how much they liked helpless cuttings in rockwool and coco plugs. I wasn’t quite surprised by the coco plug attracting them, but I was struck dumb when it turned out the little bastards ate on cuttings in rockwool. But they do. But flyin’ fuckers isn’t the topic, so let me get to the pics of my clone box:

The inside dimensions are 23" wide, 19" deep, and 20" high. The only items I had to buy was the magnetic door latches. Virtually everything else was in my wood pile. I bought the mylar in 2002 (I still have more than half of it left). The 4 mil plastic the floor is covered in was left over from covering my windows for winter. The door was a cabinet door from an entertainment center that no longer could hold my early 90s electronics. I even made the light socket for a different hood more than a dozen years ago.

When I was learning to clone, 99% of the people that posted were saying, “You get the best results using a humidity dome. That said, I don’t use one. I just clip the leaves to reduce the amount of moisture lost during the cloning process”. After reading that, who needed a humidity tent? I did the same thing. My clone area at the time was just the floor of my veg chamber, but it got diffuse light and was below the fan currents. To be fair, I need to mention the floor of that cabinet was leak proof and covered in gravel. I watered the floor every day to keep the humidity up. Besides, I was clipping my leaves…

I was also losing cuttings before they rooted. When they did, it took 2-3 weeks. I finally decided these guys must that say “that said, I don’t use a humidity dome” live in a high humidity environment environment. I’ve had 3 closed in clone chambers since then. Each time, I learned something to use in the next one.

I sometimes put rooted clones in a 6" round by 6" tall pot and I needed me next clone box to be tall enough to accommodate. Also, I’ll put a tall (12-15") clone to clone. This is why it is 20" tall on the inside. Since I kept having a mystery element killing my plants at the end of summer, I frequently cloned or seeded 8 plants at once. The chamber needed to be deep enough to accommodate two seedling mats, side by side. There needed to be a place to feed through electric cords.

Mylar covered surfaces throughout to reduce the lamp watts necessary to clone. It has two 1.75 holes at the top of two opposing walls to provide air circulation. The door needed to be magnetic latched to get it completely out of the way during feeding time and cleaning.

The immediately previous model was all clear plexi-glass with slightly smaller inside dimensions and took up on side of the veg cabinet. It had just 12" total height. As long as the veg chamber wasn’t full, there was plenty of light during those, as yet unidentified times when I was losing productive plants, I’d have both the clone box and the veg cabinet so full that none got enough good light to go around. This clone box provided the solution for all those inconveniences. During one time busy times, I’d lost some many cuttings, that decided not to clip the leaves. I was just fed up with the constant repetition of it. This was still in the plexi-glass box. I just rushed the prep. My clones showed a minimum of 4 days ahead of the ones with clipped leaves. I lost the 3 bottom most leaves. That was nothing new. More leaves tuned yellow and seemed to be dying as well. “Oh”, I thought, this is why you clip the leaves. The roots matured faster than previously before also. I put them into dirt (my substrate of the day). In about three days, all the non-clipped clones looked healthy. the yellowed leaves recovered for the most part and the clipped leaf cuttings hadn’t showed yet.

Those plants showed more rapid growth rate than the clipped leaf plants.

I did the same experiment (deliberately this time) on the next bunch of cuttings and got identical results. I never clipped a leaf on a cutting again. My cloning technique requires excellent humidity retention in the clone box. That’s it. No regular misting or special feed, nothing. These results maybe a fluke do to an environmental condition. It isn’t the clone box itself. The closed one does make a little healthier clones.

That brings us to lighting for clones. In 2001, the advise was "subdued lighting, strong direct light will be too much for your clones. This is why 2 clone areas were low in the veg chamber. Totally unnecessary. When I started using this clone box, I was using a lamp just for cloning with. I put 40W CFL in because the box said “100W equivalent” (huh? No way!) the cuttings still took as long to grow as they did in the clear box. That bulb had been used before and burned out soon. Could have from spray misting near it. I found a 45W daylight photo studio lamp color 5000k. That seemed to really do the trick. My cuttings were healing themselves faster in cloning now. This worked so well, about a month later, I ordered a 65W version of the bulb. The clones responded awesomely! They heal dying leaves quickly with this lamp! I’ve been tempted to try an 85W, but somewhere I need to draw a line on adding more wattage to my grow, so I drew it here. I’ve been using the 65W so long, I’ve needed to replace it once.

My kid and his fiance are moving out this summer (2000 miles away. ), I’ll try the 85W then because their leaving will save me quite a bit of electricity. The kid’s girl seems to really prefer incandescent lighting and leaves them on constantly, 2 less TVs will be on non-stop and the expensive old tech HO fluorescent fixture in the garage will no stay on for 18 hours before I notice it. So, an extra 20W in cloning won’t be a problem.

Ok, one last thing I do that is giving me as low as 5 days to show and now heals dying leaves so well, it gets difficult to tell which ones were injured. I use a product called HydroGuard by Botanicare.This is a beneficial bacteria the eats dead plant matter. I use it at 6ml per gallon for rooting, 4ml/gal for veg and 2ml/gal for all other feed uses.

Hydroguard®

I’ll dig through my photos and try to find examples of clones going in unclipped and coming out pretty and healthy.

[99PerCent]

All right. Let’s fill er up!

99%

[metaphysical]

Good topic! My cloning method is described in another thread but I can add some shot from my environment, which is pretty basic:

Fluoros 120cm 8000°K (each 36 watts)

Cuttings are freshly rooted so don’t need to be covered any more. They will be soon transplanted.

Some mothers in another part of the room (you can see fluoro tubes are deeply blue when compared to 6500°K CFL in the back)

… and dedicated mother room with multiple 120W CFLs (grow spectrum).

[Yarddog]

i just use a plastic greenhouse like what you see at the box stores for seed starting. i place a heat mat underneath and set the thermostat at 83 degree’s. i use one 10 watt led bulb on top for a little light. i use jiffy pucks, and clonex gel.

[Cobra50]

Very nice clone area, Metaphysical!

You obviously have a much larger grow than I. I have 2 in clone box, 4 in veg chamber and 6 in flowering room. 12 plants in all. Every 2 weeks 2 plants get harvested, 2 enter flowering room, 2 enter veg, and 2 enter clone box. The clones get a 4" pot as soon as they root. The 2 going into veg get a 6" pot, the 2 staying in veg go into an 8" pot. No more container changes after that.

My grow is so small that I don’t use mother plants. I found myself cutting branches to throw away between my my cloning needs. I grow 2 different strains (don’t ask me what they are: one is very blonde, the other is very purple) and keeping 2 mothers meant that I was destroying 6 cuttings for each one I used. Now, I prune the top 7" inches or so from each plant just before putting it into flowering and that cutting is the next clone. This becomes a problem when the flyin’ fuckers and I’ve had to take cuttings from flowering plants before. BTW, don’t bother if the plant has been in flowering more than 10 days. They root easily but I took one from a plant 11 days in and one from a plant 14 days in. They both rooted, but never reverted to veg mode, they just stayed the same size and continued to flower.

My grow is personal consumption. I grow enough for myself, my son and his wife (to be) and a close personal friend. It takes about 5 oz/month to keep us all smoking. I usually get about a half ounce extra, more if the flyin’ fuckers aren’t around.

I actually liked the plexi-glass clone box, located on one side of the veg chamber but when my kid’s lady moved in, I needed to increase my output by 33% meaning the clones needed their own home.

When I realized my main pest problem was thrips and that they were so tiny as to make them nearly invisible, I was able to find a way to keep them out of the clone box. I cover all openings with 160 mesh silk screen. I did that about 2 months ago. I also taped up two 8*10 sticky sheets, one on each side wall, with a blue sticky trap on the back wall for good measure. Up until a month ago, I had a small bug zapper in there as well. My clone box is virtually pest free now. Too bad the bigger grow areas can’t be covered like that. It would probably cause heat problems if I managed to cover them anyway.

I tried mosquito netting at first. No go. Anything smaller than a mosquito can get through. A gnat can land on the net, walk through then fly. Thrips are so small, they can fly right through the holes.

Been busy moving snow. I’ll get some pics posted of my clones later in the day.

[Cobra50]

Yarddog,

I used the same way back. As time went on and I had pest problems (the only pest problem I actually IDed in those days was spider mites, but I now know that I had signs of thrip infestation for years), I found I needed to do more at a time to keep up with the losses. Now this nice clone box usually has no more than 3 in it at any time, but I had 10 seedlings and 6 cuttings in it last year for few months. Also, I find that leaving them in the nursery after being potted helps since the soil stays warm and humidity high during this time. I usually keep them there for the full 2 weeks I allot for cloning even though I frequently have roots in 5-6 days.

[Cobra50]

Hi all,

My documenting had been mostly pretty spotty up until last year. Since April 1, 2017, I’ve recorded absolutely everything I am doing in an Access database, photos are to be added to the database this year. I’m keeping this up so when I am no longer around, my son can pick where I left off.

I wanted to put up some cloning pics I took last year during late spring. I had photo documented every part of my grow for for all of April, May, June 2017. I was in a panic when I couldn’t find them. Then I remembered my 6TB WD MyCloud (a network access drive) died in July. I could have been worse, I only lost about 3-4 months of stored files. I had bought an 8TB external drive in early April. I backed up the MyCloud drive at the time, but it wasn’t until July, when the MyCloud drive died, that I thought at all about backups. (Since then, I have a batch file that runs my backups before the basement computer shuts down. That is where my TWO 8TB drives are plugged in.)

To make a long story shorter, the only pics I have of my cloning are a group of three I started on 1/2/18. The lost files showed about 12 plants from cutting to harvest. This set is still in cloning.

I can keep documenting it all the way through, but this is what I have for now. All three cuttings were taken from lower branches I am still dealing with thrips and they have a voracious appetite for cannabis leaves, I didn’t want to reduce the yield on the two plants the cuttings were from. There are 3 cuttings started. I had taken and entire branch form one plant and it was so long, I split it into two starts, Those would be #64 & 65. Here are some of them now:

This photo was taken on 1/3/18, one day after starting. The cutting #63 is from a different plant than 64 & 65.

This pic was taken 1-14-18. Cuttings 63 & 64 are showing roots. This is the second day roots have been visible on clone #64. The roots on 63 are apparently behind the post-it flag on the container. 65 has not shown yet in this picture. Notice that while each plant has one dying leaf, the remaining leaves are still healthy. Typically, cloning with clipping the leaves will lose up to 3 bottom leaves, no more.

This picture was taken just yesterday (1/15/18). Both 63 & 64 have been planted into 6" pots. Normally, I start in 4" square pots to control how quickly it grows. Smaller pots tend to discourage abundant growth. But, as previously stated, My thrip problem, while nearly over now, gave me trouble keeping up with my schedule, so these 2 plants as well as 65, when it is ready, are starting in an intermediate pot so the roots can be as free and easy as necessary for rapid growth.

I’ll keep following these 3 in photos as time continues to pass.

[Cobra50]

Hi all,

I just realized is been 22 days since I updated the images of my clones that did didn’t get the leaves clipped. Here are some more of the same plants and a couple of brand new cuttings. Numbers 63, 64, & 65 are the clones from the last group of pics. In the last pic, they were 13 days from bare cutting

If you remember #65 was the top part of #64. 64 had been too tall. I’ve grown out tall clones before with little of no trouble, but this time I needed these clones to make no matter what, so I played it safe and reduce the #64 cutting.

Here are #s 63 and 64 as they were on 2/2/18, 15 days into vegging. You can see #64 had suffered some water damage from applying sf nematodes to seek and destroy flyin’ fucker larvae. The substrate needs to be kept very moist for the health of the nematodes. The really small clones have a hard time with that at first. For all I know, it is their reaction to panicky larvae running for their lives. I say this, because after the first application they always get better quickly.

It is interesting to note that #63 started at 1/2 the size of 64. It had been only It is by far the healthiest looking of the two.

This next pic is of #65. n this pic, it is in its first pot. I couldn’t bear to throw it away at this time, while it was cut at the same time as 63 & 64 were, I left it is a cup of water for an extra 5 days before starting it. I use this trick any time I take cuttings too soon. I have also stored cuttings in a 1 gallon zip lock when I needed to put off starting them. through trial and error, I find if I need to do this for more than 5 days, I need to re-orient the zip lock a couple of times a day to prevent leaves from sitting in a puddle of condensate. The leaves that do sit too long in a condensate always die away.

I did that with the numbers 66 & 67. I took them from a plant that had been in Flowering for 3 days. I saved them for 5 days. Unfortunately, I hadn’t moved the zip lock during its 5 days and #67 had been sitting in condensate. You can see some leaf damage to #67 from the frig. Number 66 suffered very minor damage to one leaf while in the frig.

This shot is of 65 at 25 days since cut. 66 & 67 are at 5 days since starting, 10 days since cut. Its a bit difficult to see, but if you look closely, you can see a tiny protrusion out the coco plug about 1/2" under the 2nd 6 in 66. I have a close up, but I think you’ll like the next day photo better. I always wait a day or two after showing to bury for the first time.

.
As you can see, 66 is fully ready to get buried, it’ll be an additional 3 days before 67 shows.

This pic reveals the 67 has showed at 9 days since starting (14 since cut). Notice the leaf damage did not get worse during cloning. Also notice the damaged leaf on 66 has started to heal only 3 days since getting buried and, what I didn’t show, is that roots are sticking out the drain holes. One more “and”, and there is only 1 damaged leaf on 65, it was the one that can be seen in my last set of pics. I had buried 65 in a smaller pot than 63 & 64. I wanted to encourage them to grow quickly since I was a week behind schedule when the went into Veg. I wanted to discourage 65 from growing too rapidly. This is also the reason I left it in the lower light environment of the clone box. If you check out this next pic, you’ll see the strategy worked as planned.

63, 64, 65, 67 all in the frame in my veg cabinet. See small 65 stayed while 63 & 64 doubled their sizes since potting. Now I have a full veg chamber again, all back on schedule. I’m holding 67 in the clone box for the same reason I had held 65 back. I’ve had a crowded veg chamber and didn’t like it one bit. I had to destroy healthy plants because i had nowhere to grow them. I’d share them, but they too were on the network drive that died. I only lost about 3-4 months of data when the drive stopped working, but there were a lot of pictures taken during that time.

If anyone is interested, I do have some pics of a plant that started from a plant 9 days into flowering. It does make an interesting study.

Cheers!
C50

[Cobra50]

Hey All,

Here are some more pics of my youngest plants. You may want to refer back to earlier pics if you need to. I’ll start with the 3 from my 1st photo set, in my JAN 16 posting.

63 & 64 live together. They have been in veg for 21 days and were cuttings only 40 days ago. 64 is the unlucky one. It started out as a beautiful, albeit sparse cutting. It was beautiful and healthy when ity was buried. 7 days later, it got its 1st round of sf nematodes. (For those whom don’t know what a nematode is, it is a microscopic worm. It feeds on many different of insect larvae. Fungus gnats and thrips included. I buy them 25 million at a time and use them in 3 applications, over 10-14 days.) Although I’m not sure why, the first application on newly rooted clones occasionally causes water damage. The substrate needs to be continually moist to keep the nematodes alive, but coco doesn’t retain moisture long and usually the damaged clone starts recovering in a couple of days. As a last resort, I have dug it up and put it into fresh coco, but I don’t like to do that if I can avoid it.

Anyway, this poor little plantling was turning completely around. It didn’t heal the wounded leaves, it just grew new one instead. I mentioned in the my regrets thread

What is the biggest thing that you regret doing with your grow?

I have a new regret today. I decided to take my plants out of their areas to get better photos. [image] See the short one on the right? [image] This is the same plant 1 minute later… I saw it go over, but I had the taller plant in my hand and didn’t want to drop it while trying to save the one that was falling. This is one of those situations that I wish I could’ve taken back the last 10 seconds. [image] Fortunately, if you stitch it back together with some twi…

that I’d taken 63 and 64 out of the cabinet and set them in front of the closed doors to photograph them in better lighting for detail. I knocked poor little 64 down and now she needs crutches and bandages but I expect her to make a full recovery. Unfortunately, she is no longer a good example of how good clones turn out with out clipping the leaves.

But, look at her sister #63. She is an excellent example. in the first set of pics, she is the one I started in a diagonal half of a rockwool cube. Going through the sequences, you can see the leaf in contact with the heat mat got dried out, but taking a close look at the the first image in today’s post, you should be able to tell that the leaf has actually mostly healed. This leaf is still supplying the plant. There is one a bit higher up that looks unhealthy but it is still on the plant. Not the healthiest leaf on the plant by any means, but it is still soft. It is a toss up as to how long this leaf will remain. However, look at her. She has grown 12.5" since going into veg. I will be taking a cutting from her a little later, but I wanted to show how nice she looks before I did.

The last of the 3 plants from my first set of photos is #65. She lives with #66. She is the one I deliberately held back while 63 & 64 went in. I have a set schedule. Every 2 weeks, 2 plants get harvested, 2 plants go into Flowering, 2 plants go into Veg. 1 seek later all 4 plants in Veg get up-sized. It works just fine, if I work it. At any given time I have 2 clones in making, 4 plants in veg in to different stages, and 6 plants in Flowering, also in different stages.

65 & 66 look like they are sisters, but 65 is more than a week older. Again, I want to point out the leaf damage on these 2. The one on 66 is pretty easy to see. It is to the right side of the container on the edge of the open area. I expect this leaf to heal somewhat, because the stem is still as moist as if the leaf were fresh. I could be wrong, but the first time I noticed a leaf heal, it looked just like that before hand. I thought maybe my weed was stronger than normal, I mean I was sure I was just really stoned. I did have sequential pics. In fact, that event spurred me into a picture taking frenzy for several months. The day I realized I lost all those photos on the death of my network drive, I just threw up my hands and said, “Fuck it! Why bother after that?” and completely stopped shooting pics until @LemonadeJoe contacted me and gently nudged me into participating instead of just reading and leaving. He was right, it was time. That’s when I started shooting again and posting as well.

Ok, now focus on 65. She has a dying leaf as well (just under the biggest leaf on the left) and that one is a goner for certain. The stem is mostly dried out and outer half of each finger broke off while I was re-potting. I implore you, look closely at the rest of the leaves on each plant. They are all very healthy.

BTW, did you notice that I put these 2 into my nets (what I’ve been calling my drilled pots)? When I re-potted all 4 Vegging plants, I saw 0 (zero) sign of insect activity at all! I am daring to hope the flyin’ fuckers are gone, at least until they find me again in the Spring. I should have at least another 4 weeks! The drilled pots worked remarkably well when no insects were present, which was the same time last year.

The last cutting I am following in this series is #67. As you’ll recall, I said that 66 & 67 had been kept in the frig for a while so I didn’t need to load up any station. I thought is was about 5 days, my records indicate was 7 days. I had turned them 2X, but the cutting that became plant #67 had laid in a condensate puddle as some point in the refrigerator. Those leaves suffered damage before they ever got started.

This little plantling was cut 17 days ago. It fully rooted at day 9 and I buried her on day 10. The leaf damage she entered cloning with is still there, but again, look for yourself, while 2 leaves slowly got worse, the leaves at the top (which , frankly worried me more than a little when I first took them out of the frig) has stayed consistent. I expect both of those top leaves to recover nearly 100%.

I hope these photos have persuaded some of you “leaf clipping” folks to think about trying it for yourself and some of you “you should always use a humidity tent, I never do, but they say it is the best way” people to change your mind and build or purchase a little plant friendly humidity retaining enclosure. It is worth it!

[Cobra50]

Hello everyone,

I have confirmation that my thrip troubles are over (until spring). The best sign is my latest clone. Generating 3 clones at a time not long ago to make up for a pest related loss, has left me somewhat lopsided, in the relationship between cloning and vegging. Because of this, I needed only one clone this time around. The new one went in the way all mine do, all leaves intact.

Here she is on start day 0:

This is her today, on start day 6:

Look at the leaf touching the ground. I’ve kept it off the heat mat, so while the very tips are getting dry, the rest of the leaf will remain intact.

If you look closely at both pics, you’ll see on start day 6 the clone is standing taller than it did on start day 0. I don’t want to take up too much space, so I’ve left out the day 2 & 3 photos which showed her bowing deeply. Day 4 it started to stand a bit more firm.

It is so good to know the only thing killing plants in my grows for a while is me.

Cheers

[Cobra50]

The first 3 clones I started following early in this thread were numbers 63, 64 and 65. I harvested numbers 63 and 6 this weekend.

63 was 32.75" (832mm) tall when I harvested her on flower day 53, 102 days since cutting was started. Cleaned and cut down, she weighed 292 grams, and gave me 41.1 grams of sticky leaves which will be used for hash/rosin/concentrate. These, of course, are wet weights.

For your viewing pleasure, #63 before & after trim

And this is a before and after trim image of 63’s largest cola

Plant number 64 was not only a subject of this study, but she suffered an injury at the hands of her foolish and ruthless owner and was included in a post in this thread as well:

What is the biggest thing that you regret doing with your grow?

I have a new regret today. I decided to take my plants out of their areas to get better photos. [image] See the short one on the right? [image] This is the same plant 1 minute later… I saw it go over, but I had the taller plant in my hand and didn’t want to drop it while trying to save the one that was falling. This is one of those situations that I wish I could’ve taken back the last 10 seconds. [image] Fortunately, if you stitch it back together with some twi…

64 was 23.5" (597mm) tall when I harvested her on flower day 54, 103days since cutting was started. Cleaned and cut down, she weighed 233 grams, and gave me 70.6 grams of sticky leaves

Here are before and after trim photos of both her and her biggest bud

There were a few other plants I was following closely in my study higher up in this thread and I’ll do a set of harvest photos for them as well

[Cobra50]

I finished harvesting 2 more of the plants from my study of cloning without clipping the leaves. Numbers 65 & 66 are now occupying space in my curing locker.

First up, #65 in a before and after trim pose. She is such a ham…

Here is a closeup (as close as I can get with my camera) of her largest bud, along with an extreme closeup of its trichomes.

Number 65 was 23.5" tall and very healthy at harvest. Cleaned up and fresh, she weighed 441.5 grams and she gave me 89.5 grams of sticky leaves and tiny buds to hash out. I’ll most likely cull out more small buds for hash when the plant has dried out.

Number 66 was taller but her buds weren’t as big around as those on #65.

Here is her largest cola before trimming

Number 66 isn’t as much of a show off, she didn’t want to give you an extreme closeup. She was 36.5" tall on harvest day. Once she was trimmed up, she weighed 373.9 grams and gave up 58.7 grams of sticky leaves and tiny buds.

I think you can agree, not trimming the fan leaves at cloning didn’t hurt any of these plants at all. It is my opinion that the more leaves on the plant in Clone and Veg, the better the growth rate. The day I put a plant into Flowering lately, I prune away all the small lower and inner branches.because I want the buds that are in the light to have all the energy that would have been expended on growing the little stuff that doesn’t get enough light to grow anyway.

[Cobra50]

I’ve changed the light I use in Clone now for the 4th time since i started this thread, 5 times in the last 7 months. When I started it, I was using this 65W CFL in this 12"x 20" reflector for my light source. I had recently changed it out with the same bulb but it didn’t seem to be doing the job the same as the original had.

I thought I’d try LED and looked about on Amazon. I found this light for less than $25 and decided to give it a try, afterall, is is only $25. How much is that worth today?!

They sell it as 45W even though it is a 15W light. I wish light sales would stop referring to the apparent wattage compared to an incandescent bulb. This must be what people are calling blurple. The color of the light is pretty… for about 2 minutes, then it makes me a bit nauseous. I have no idea if I’ll ever use it again. Probably not.

Then there was this light. It uses an actual 45W but claims to be 225W. Both this light and the rainbow light claim to be full spectrum, yet they don’t have the same color light.

I liked this one a little better. It didn’t make me nauseous. But it still didn’t feel like a good light. So I ordered a SolStix X3. I ordered it via snail mail and money order and SolStrip is more than half way across the country to it took 10-12 days. In the meantime, I’m thinking the SolStix X3 might be too much for my clones and seedlings, so I bought a 30W 5500K corn light.

I was quite happy with that. When the SolStix arrived, I realized I had forgotten to order a driver with it, so I did, also m.o. / snail mail. While waiting for the driver to arrive, I couldn’t think of where to put just 1 SolStix. When the driver arrived, I decided to see it it would overpower the Clone box afterall.

It is 70W of dual spectrum lighting. I couldn’t photograph the SolStix directly while lit because it overpowered the auto focus on my camera, leaving me with 3 pics of dark blurs.

It was nearly ready to go on top of the Clone box, where here is a 20"x 20" tempered plate of glass. I wanted to make sure there was air flow between the light and the glass because I have a piece of 80 mesh silk screen over the light and all openings in the box to keep out thrips. I had some 3/4 aluminum angle so I quickly made up some feet.

This is the view looking up at the top from the inside of the clone box.

It is very bright in there now! About as bright as 1:00 pm on a cloudless day in July. It has been in there for 3 days now and the Sweet Tooth seedlings seem to really like it, so I am going to leave it where it is.

I also have decided not to convert some Anjeet lamps with high quality cobs. I am just going to build a 10-12 strip ladder rack of SolStrips X3s for my new flowering lamp. It won’t be that much more and I can buy them piece meal until I have all I need.