Advice on clones?

[TheFertilizer]

I have had these clones in the dome for a few weeks now, I took them like a week after switching to 12/12 so they took a while. They're rooting now but I notice their leaves yellowing. Do I need to increase the strength of their solution, or maybe move the light up? Also it seems like mold keeps growing on the side of these GroDan cubes. I'm assuming I should be pulling off the weird silver tape before planting the cubes?

The solution has Flora Nova Grow and GH Rapid Start in it.

 

[Cultivator]

just give light feed of 1.0ec grow nutes (500ppm) ph 5.5.

Take off foil when you transplant if they arent going on slabs.

Be careful not to soak the rockwool. keep damp but not wet.

my eyes arent great and i dont have my gasses on but is that male in the 3rd photo? looks like it has balls?

 

[TheFertilizer]

just give light feed of 1.0ec grow nutes (500ppm) ph 5.5.

Take off foil when you transplant if they arent going on slabs.

Be careful not to soak the rockwool. keep damp but not wet.

my eyes arent great and i dont have my gasses on but is that male in the 3rd photo? looks like it has balls?

No I think those are just some little nubs where I had plucked off a bud site, I didn't get these cuts before I started to flower.

How much water should be in the tray? I feel like I'm using too much, but then it dries out so quickly I worry that the water will fall down below the tray level. Right now the cubes are basically standing in 1/16th - 1/10th inch of water.

It was definitely mold growing on the side of them though I wiped them down, changed the water out thoroughly and sprayed them with some hydrogen peroxide. I made sure to rinse the clones off with plain water afterward but hopefully I didn't do more harm than good.

Whoa, 500 ppm? I barely started giving my full grown flowering plants 600 and they're showing a little burn, did I misread that?

 

[Cultivator]

they shouldnt be sitting in any water at all. they should be damp, not wet. Thats why its getting mould on. Be careful or you will get root rot if they sitting in water. just top feed them daily if need be. Leave the dome off now, that will harden off the clones. They prob took so long to root because they were too wet.

yeah 500ppm on a 500conversion, thats 1.0ec. I start seedlings and clones on that and have done for many years. Thats based on water starting at 0.3ec(150ppm), or ro water with 0.3ec of calmag.

 

[TheFertilizer]

they shouldnt be sitting in any water at all. they should be damp, not wet. Thats why its getting mould on. Be careful or you will get root rot if they sitting in water. just top feed them daily if need be. Leave the dome off now, that will harden off the clones. They prob took so long to root because they were too wet.

yeah 500ppm on a 500conversion, thats 1.0ec. I start seedlings and clones on that and have done for many years. Thats based on water starting at 0.3ec(150ppm), or ro water with 0.3ec of calmag.

Oh I thought I needed to keep water in the tray under ( in the little channels/gulleys ) the cubes for the roots to go into? It's okay to let those go dry or will it damage the roots? I guess I've been lucky in the past and it's always worked out, probably because I was using much better solution--white shark instead of rapid start.

Okay cool just making sure, thought maybe you could have meant 50 and put an extra 0 and I'd be giving like ten times more lol I'm not really familiar with EC.

 

[Cultivator]

no dont keep water in the trays. white shark is much better to use for roots though.

 

[BonzaSeedBank]

I agree. I wouldn't get the water in trays as that would lid to any possible problems of things growing in the water that you don't want.

 

[TheFertilizer]

no dont keep water in the trays. white shark is much better to use for roots though.

Cool man, thanks. I'll just stick to top feeding them. And here I thought I knew what I was doing with cloning

 

[TheFertilizer]

Well I think I screwed up. I was worried about them staying too wet so I wanted to just plant them and let them get water/air that way but after leaving the humidity dome off for a little while most of them died, the tops got all brown and withered looking. A few of them are still okay but I don't know if they're going to pull through.

I am wondering, do I keep giving them water pH'd to 5.5 now that they're planted in soil? I mean most of the roots are still in the rockwool cube.

At any rate it looks like only one or two of the ones I really wanted survived so i am going to just have to take clones again at the end of harvest. I don't know if I'm going to fuck around with rockwool though, cloning with a tub of water and an air stone has always worked better for me.

 

[Cultivator]

no do not water with 5.5 in soil. the roots will soon out grow the cubes. Cloning in rockwool is really simple and fast so it has to be user error. Dip your rockwool in your solution, add clone and dip again a week later after removing done. should see roots by the time it dries again.

 

[TheFertilizer]

no do not water with 5.5 in soil. the roots will soon out grow the cubes. Cloning in rockwool is really simple and fast so it has to be user error. Dip your rockwool in your solution, add clone and dip again a week later after removing done. should see roots by the time it dries again.

No I don't think I was taught how to clone with rockwool cubes and a tray right. I soaked the cubes in solution, and then that was it I never had to soak them again. The first couple of times I did it my friend helped me out and he had me fill up the tray enough that the cubes were constantly in just a very shallow standing puddle of water. Looking back though i think this might have been because my room was ridiculously hot ( like 90s ) and they would have dried out too fast otherwise. So this time around I did the same thing but my envrionment is much better controlled temperature wise and I just don't think they ever dried out even once. Meanwhile my thinking has been that you have to keep water in the little grooves at least for the roots to find.

The first few times I've ever cloned I used an aerocloner, except instead of the little nozzles with the water spray I just filled it up with water and put an air stone in it. Then with some Great White, I just stuck the clones in that and they would all root with like 100% success rate, but it was slow, so I just assumed rockwool would be better because it's faster. Well if done right...

Well, I watered the soil with 5.5 pH water thinking the roots in the cubes still needed it, so should I water again with 6.5 water even though they haven't even come close to drying out yet? I tried to leave the dome off a little to let them dry and that's when the other ones died. In fact it's almost as if the ones with the roots out of the cube died while the ones that weren't quite rooted left are still alive so I feel like I might NEED to flush that 5.5 water out and that might be what's killing them?

I'm considering it a learning experience, I won't come out with as many as I wanted of this phenotype so I'm just going to have to clone at the end of flower again. Maybe taking better quality cuts will make a difference too, none of these cuts were thick enough to even plug up the hole in the rockwool.

 

[Cultivator]

It sounds like theres several issues going on. I much prefer aero cloning. why dont you just get a regular aerocloner? Roots will come through in the same time as rockwool. No do not water again with 6.5, allow the soil to dry out then next time adjust the ph because the roots are small and you will just end up with root rot.

 

[TheFertilizer]

I just might since I will need to buy a pump and stuff anyway.

So this probably goes without saying but apparently I'm not so smart at this so I better make sure... I should have the dome off to let them dry out right? They seem to be dying without it on.

 

[Cultivator]

i take the dome off after a week. that allows the clones to harden off.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Hmm so you think the ones dying off without the dome are just ones that weren't really rooting at all and were surviving off the humidity?

 

[Cultivator]

maybe. its hard to say without seeing pics. you can leave dome on until fully rooted if necessary, just dont keep the rockwool wet.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Hard to get very clear pics of them

I left the dome off of them most of the night last night and the biggest one is the only one that didn't seem to get any worse but it's still not looking very good

 

[Cultivator]

cut the leaves in half to stop them transpiring as much. they arent the best clones either. Dont add any more moisture to them pots, just allow them to dry out and see where you are then.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Thanks man. Could it be because they were taken like a week or two after the flip to 12/12 as well?

If one of them makes it I am going to try to veg it as a mother plant to take better cuts for sure.

 

[Cultivator]

maybe but they just look like bad cuts. they will take longer to root when taken from a plant that has been flipped. Im not a fan of doing that at all. Are they regs or fems? If its from a fem it not a good idea to mother it, especially after its already come from a flowering plant.