DIY Aerocloner First Test Run - Please Help!

[Steve McStoferson]

nice thread, just read through it all and plan on building a similar setup. I've had my ups and downs with cloning but haven't really narrowed down a fool proof method. I've found its generally strain dependent (my wonder woman clones root no matter what).

Definitely sticking around to see your outcome. Good luck on this run bro

 

[Bandit420]

oh man thats huge!! lol i honestly cut mine just below where your pic says "1st node" and wouldve removed that "1st node" and stuck that inch of the stem under the neoprene collar. i was afraid of going too big but damn, i guess thats the way to go with the aerocloner!

Yeah that part of the cutting is too fresh & immature and will have very little of the natural rooting hormones in that part of the branch. No way will that part take root on a reliable consistent basis.
Down where I cut the branch it is mature (at least three weeks old) and will have a woody texture to the stem rather than being soft & green. That part of the branch is also very close to the main stalk on the lower part of the plant where I believe those natural rooting hormones are abundant.

 

[THConnoisseur]

right on Bandit, i see what your saying. ill definitely be taking much bigger cuttings in the future, and ill be kicking myself if that greatly increases my success lol it always seems to be the small shit that makes the biggest difference... fucking plants man!!!

well stay tuned guys, i should have another aero trial within the month! thanks for all the input!

 

[echo-1]

I have a setup similar to yours...almost identical with the aero cloner built from a 5 gallon bucket that i had purchased from a local hydro farm retail store..the only thing that i see different from your design is that even though you have an air rock? you don't have a vent in the top of your lid for additional, fresh, oxygen to reach the cuttings which allows for air circulation...it took about 5 days or so to see the cuttings begin to develop roots for myself but they came through, also i run my air rock 24/7 but have 15 minute intervals for the pump off of a grow light timer, along with just a hydrogen peroxide and distilled h20 solution, they just shot out..idk if that helps being my first post with this forum site..but i have my cloner working from what i've learned from a growers class, and from personal research.. spread the light and happy growing.

 

[echo-1]

I also forgot to mention when I take clones for aeroponics, one can take the blade and cut upward about a 1/4 inch after the clone-to-be has been cut at the 45 degree angle so that when the dipped into a cloning gel it will give the new plant a little help in starting root development..you really want to get the those vitamins to take hold around the base so that the plant knows to grow on its own at this point. the splitting effect will start a pair of rooting shoots, more surface area for the moisture from your clone to guzzle up.

 

[PeterDaily]

High THC!
Here's a pic of where I cut my clones....As you can tell there's probably a 101 ways to get a clone to root from all of these different takes on the subject so there's no way I can tell you this is the absolute fool proof way but it works great for me...

I like big clones because they are usually a better specimen than something small. Once they do take root I only need to veg for maybe a week and they're off to bloom.
With small clones they take longer to root and longer to get established as small plants once they do take root.

The cutting above is huge and has about two more nodes than what I usually take but when I have the opportunity to take a biggin' like this I jump at it.

From the very top shoot I count down at least two nodes. That part of the clone from the second node and up will be above the neoprene sleeve. Below the neoprene is an additional two sets of nodes. The leaves at the two bottom nodes are removed to create additional rooting points.
I dont really go by length of the cutting but number of nodes dictate to me how big the clone will be.

Some growers score or slice an additonal mark on the stem but I dont. I always see roots come out on virtually every part of the stem, the cut node, the bottom cut, and every other place up and down the stem will have roots pop out.

Larger cuts are better when they grow out. the small ones are good also and grow to be pretty large but as he mentioned, they take a bit longer to veg and the size difference is major even when they reach appropriate height. I also noticed that larger woody cuts take a bit longer to root, but im testing 'scarification' where i scrap the bottom 1/8inch of the green 'epidermis' and re-dip the cutting in the root gel. but i still havent seen a difference in time of roots between scarring and not scarring. still testing.....

 

[joehank]

From what i've seen, everything you are doing that YOU can control is right. I have to go with what someone else said before, and I'm sure it's a humidity issue. Even though it's an aerocloner setup you still need high humidity to trigger clones to root.
I too suffered the same problem when my cloning percentage dropped from 99% to 50% and lower. It started when the weather changed in the fall( I'm in northeast). Took me a while to figure it out, but I've added a small humidifier (cost 35 dollars from Lowes) and was able to get humidity up to 55%. Even though that is still low, it was better than the 30% it was at before.
I could see the improvement within 2 days. All of my plants looked healthier, and my next set of clones rooted in 7 days. It was the only thing I changed. My diy cloner was like yours except it was in an 18 gal rubbermaid tub. However I did have a timer on mine, which ran 1 minute on, 4 minutes off. It's good to let the stems breath and not get water logged.
I know the EZ cloner says to run 24/7, but think about it, if you give the plants all that water all the time, they are not going to try as hard to find it . That is another reason for not adding nutes to a cloner. Make those roots come out and find what they need!

 

[THConnoisseur]

echo, my air pump is outside of the closet so fresh, cool air is being pumped into the res all the time. are you talking about the closet itself? cuz its about 50-60% rh and 70 deg, should be fine...

joehank, if i need to use a dome and mist the cuttings in an aerocloner, whats the point? lol ill just stick to rw or plugs... from what ive seen, when you figure out the right shit to put in the res you dont need to do anything but come back in a week to find vigorously rooted clones. if i cant figure out a "set-it-and-forget-it" method im just gonna stick with the propagation dome and try to increase my low success rate...

 

[Bandit420]

right on Bandit, i see what your saying. ill definitely be taking much bigger cuttings in the future, and ill be kicking myself if that greatly increases my success lol it always seems to be the small shit that makes the biggest difference... fucking plants man!!!

well stay tuned guys, i should have another aero trial within the month! thanks for all the input!

Yep! You would be surprised at how big of difference the smallest of things will make with these plants...

When we clone we're making two very simple things happen... The 1st is we're trying to keep the top alive until there are roots that can feed the plant. When there are no roots the plant will mobilize nutes (mainly nitrogen) in the lower leaves to feed the top shoot. Kinda like how a human body will burn existing fat to feed itself when it's hungry. That's why the bottom leaves will yellow and die off while the top stays green.
At the same time we try to keep it alive we're also saturating the stem w/ vitamin B & other rooting hormones to expedite the process of creating roots with a chemical reaction. Sure plain water works but it can take weeks. Using a good cloning solution reduces the turn around time to days.
The plant is in a tremendous amount of shock during this whole ordeal. In fact cloning is the most stressful event in a plants life. Asking it to thrive and "search" for food or water simply adds to the stress and increases the rate of failure. The plant is already working it's ass off to stay alive. Now is the time to be ez on the plant helping it any way possible by making sure all of it's needs are met without the plant needing to work for it.

 

[THConnoisseur]

definitely man, i know that even the most experienced growers will have a batch of cuttings fail here and there (tho i bet they dont admit to it lol) but i do know i should be at least be able to get clones to root more often then i am. the 20 cuttings in the rapid rooters/dome that i took a week ago have not popped yet, i have the heating mat on a thermostat at 82deg, misted 3x a day, and all my equipment/cloning tools were sterile when i took em. the cuttings look basically as good as the day i took them, hardly any yellowing and no drooping even tho i now have the top vents on the dome open all the time... im starting to think, based on what you said about the cuttings sending nitrogen to the top to sustain life, that BIGGER cuttings will be forced to drain their N quicker cuz its a bigger plant and since lower N levels are associated with successful cloning rates... well you get the point lol im gonna take some BIG branches from my lst'd holygrail og mom in a month and im excited to see how it goes.

 

[THConnoisseur]

hey guys, i have a small issue that i think everyone here could help me out with. my newest mother plant, an OG strain called "holy grail", started off great in the ocean forest soil. it looked good for a month under the t5 floro while i began to lst it, but ever since i put it under the 400w hps (for 10 days when i was out of town earlier this month) it has shown a yellowing on the edges of all the leaves. i transplanted it a week ago into a 5gal pot of new ocean forest soil and gave it a good watering with a mild dose of big bloom and grow big thinking that would solve the problem but it doesnt seem to be clearing up. luckily its not getting worse, so maybe its just taking a little bit longer to recover than id hoped. heres some pics of her back under the t5...

if you guys have any suggestions im all ears, thanks!

 

[Steve McStoferson]

since you just transplanted, it shouldn't need any nutes for a little while as the soil has nutes in it. The issue is also affecting the new growth, so it looks to me like they're overfed a little bit. Give them a good flush with plain ph'd water and check the runoff to make sure its at the right range and it should stop spreading.

 

[THConnoisseur]

hmmm... well the yellowing started before it was transplanted. it had been in a 1gal pot with ocean forest and was getting just tap water (mine is at 8.0pH) which has never been and issue for any of the previous strains ive done. i was thinking that it was from the 400w hps being too intense, though the other plants were fine... i will give it a good flush tomorrow with 5gal of 6.5pH water, should get me back to square one, thanks for the feedback man!

 

[THConnoisseur]

good news, that mother plant started clearing up in the last 12hrs all by itself! didnt even get around to flushing it yet and when i just took a look at it i noticed that all of the yellow edges were turing back to green again thank god lol i really think it was an odd reaction to the lst and HID bulb that made it too stressed out. now back under the t5 for a day and its clearing up...

 

[DarkAsylumn]

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[THConnoisseur]

DarkAsylum, i agree with you 100%!! lol

also, my clones in the rapid rooters/dome havent rooted yet and its now day 11... i went through them all yesterday and any of the ones that slipped right out when given a gentle tug were thrown out, which leaves me with 5 out of the 16 green crack that actually have some root development occurring, along with one of the blueberry cuts and one of the hawaiian og... the temps have been dropping real low at night and the plugs seemed to be a bit cold this morning so i cranked up the heating pad for them another 5deg. im real excited to try another batch of clones though, between taking larger cuts and adjusting my watering/misting habits im pretty sure im gonna have some decent success, so thanks guys!

 

[SauronBlue]

I have had some success in rooting with aero, and I am on my first grow. I can tell you what caused this crazy root growth in less than 2 weeks, and I'm trying to replicate it:

I had a 50 site cloner running with a light dose of cloning solution. All of my clones started out at 3-6 inches tall, all with a good 3+ nodes of growth. I cut off all of the branches other than the top 1-2 sets of leaves. I put the clone into the neoprene disc so that the bottom stem is just above(still touching) the top of the disc. I want a good amount under the disc(2-3 inches) to give it a lot of space to root. some root up high, others down at the tip. some roots will even poke thru from inside the neoprene. Give your plants lots of options. the very first thing after cutting the clone from the mom is to dip that 45 degree cut immediately into the rooting hormone, as the natural suction of the plant is going already - understand that the plant is constantly sucking liquid from down at the roots, out to the tip, so get the rooting gel in there before the veinal pressure drops, or it wont be as effective. I think your air/water temps are ok, so I'll leave that alone. Light is not good for the roots, so try not to peek in there every day. Light leaks can also cause algae growth, though I doubt that has happened to you yet. Although humidity isn't vital up top, you do want a very humid area below, so one more reason to stop peeking so much. The big water droplets are what you see, but the tiny drops suspended as a fog are what REALLY kicks up the growth. I regularly get growth like Roscoes's pics by doing what he says:

What gave me the results you saw in the first post was the combination of what is above, and an added accident. Due to leakage from my homemade cloner, the water level dropped too low for the pump inside to stay completely underwater. This means that the pump couldn't get the full pressure, so the water from the spray heads was not "shooting out" like normal and soaking the stems/roots with spray, but were more like what a garden hose sprays when you let your kids take a drink, or maybe a school drinking fountain. Only very few roots were touching any direct water, but the falling water was obviously still cusing mist and water vapor to fill the cloner. The cloner spent at least 4-7 days of the total 12-14 days like this, and the results were awesome. This makes me tend to agree with the mindset of letting the roots do some work to get some satisfaction. If I had a different timer I would try the 5off/1on(I wanted to from the beginning of my cloning) but my timers don't give me that level of control. Hope you get some info that helps you out, and as others have said; no method is "perfect", different techniques may work better with your plants/nutes/water/light/etc. There are tons of variables that make things different for us all, even when we try the same things - sometimes we can't even replicate our OWN methods! You have lots of good suggestions to draw from, I'm sure you'll figure it out.

PS. I also left the leaves on for that batch of super-rooted clones. A very seasoned grower told me that the leaves store nutes that the clones can draw on to help them through the process if needed, so It's best not not cut them. I happen to agree after following his advice, and now leave all my clones unclipped. You don't need to worry too much if the leaves overlap - just remember that they don't need a ton of light, think of the extra leaf just like energy bars for your baby plants.

 

[NACnCO]

What kind of timer would allow 5 min off / 1 min on? Anyone got a model # or some other way of making this happen?

 

[Sky Rocket]

Titan controls "apollo 2" cycle timer with photocell. Google it and you will get the info you are searching for

 

[NACnCO]

Titan controls "apollo 2" cycle timer with photocell. Google it and you will get the info you are searching for

Thanks for the info. I had no idea these types of timers existed. I should say, I didn't know they were readily available.