Need advanced ideas or techniques to cut cloning time in an ezcloner

[click80]

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong place. I have zero time in my days now and would love to sit on this forum for a few hours like i used to but i am really in a bind, time wise, and i cant drop any patients as all are terminal im sorry to say.

Anyhoo.....

The Easter Bunny brought me a 120 site ezcloner for Xmas (what a stoner huh? He was smoking my Deathstar). Anyway, im trying to improve my cloning time. I have used diy cloners up till now and usually have 100% or close in 2 weeks. After, I usually throw them in the veg cloner at 600 ppm nutes for about 1 week so the roots bust out better (they are under a 4 bulb 4foot T5. I have put them right in the tent (flood trays) but they do much better after that week. I yanked 2lbs off 23 Deathstar in SOG. I do the about the same with BBCheese and others. So i feel that if I could get advice on improving my roots right out of the ezcloner like I know some people do then that would help enormously.

I know about keeping mommys healthy, how to cut (i do it underwater), length etc...I have the basics, yes i use rooting gel (rootech), I do let them sit with the gel on for about 30 mins before turning cloner on, i ph the RO water to 5.8, everything is sterile (including me since 2005 thank god), my moms are very healthy and clone easy. I have a chiller and have been keeping H20 at 71 degrees F. The ezcloner is under a 2 bulb 4foot T5. I have a 4 foot 4bulb but that is over the cloner i use for veg. I felt the 4 bulb 4foot fixture was too much. Room temp is 74 to 78 degrees. Good gentle air circulation, never directly on clones.

Specifically I would like to know these things, but any advice, products, techniques or all the above... is MOST appreciated:

1. I feel that some brands of pucks are too tight, i was thinking of cutting off a small piece of a drinking or coffee straw to protect the stem. I want any input, pro or con. Occasionally I have noticed the stems getting some red tinge above the top of puck. Below the puck i get that when they are getting ready to show callus's. Any thoughts are welcome.

2. Nutrients in solution? Additives with a track record? I use RO water with colloidal minerals added. I have tried plain tap with chlorine removed, plain RO, either way i get noticeably better results with colloidal minerals. (Anyone with thoughts about the collidal minerals is welcome as i really dont know why they help versus plain tap water with minerals.

3. Better Techniques? i would like to know if how other people deal with a node that ends up under puck, like when there is a node close to the one you want hanging in misters and it ends up under neoprene; do you slice it or pinch, if sliced do you gel it or not⁉ i pinch so roots dont go into puck.

I have heard great things about HG Root Excelurator (sp), Silica Blast (the one from Botanicare), RootJuice, etc...

So any advice is welcome, and thanks.

Again I really do apologize if this is the wrong place and I did a couple quick searches but I want advanced advice.

Thanx

Oh, yes i do know that 2 weeks is doing good and i shouldnt complain, but l have to have some sort of life, i love this but im getting burnt out :worried

 

[easypleasie]

This is an interesting thread that could help you cut some days off your cloning. Might be worth a try.

 

[BoCo Buds]

Will attest to the benefits of RE... as I understand it, this is anaerobic, which is unique, i.e., Humbolts Roots is aerobic. All I know is that haven't had an issue with DO since using it... even at low rates of .1ml per gal, each feed. It doesn't seem to me to act as a roots 'excellerator' but rather a water inoculant.

Doubt the KSi has any benefit to root formation however. For what it's worth. GL

 

[click80]

thanks

Thanks to both of you...i did find that thread and some others...too much of hurry first time...

 

[click80]

update

okay i am about 48 hours in and decided to go with the info Jackmayoffer gave in the thread below...thank you easypleasie....i used the powerclone, the only thing i did diff was imm after cutting clone i dipped in a solution of pclone 50% of label....as of an hour ago about the stems are showing very visible white bumps, no stem discoloration, no wilting....THANK YOU EASY.....

will update when i add the rootsexcel, which i got a free sample of btw....:character0029:

oh, i also used the leftover cutting dip for some clones i was about to shitcan...i had peeked at roots before i dipped and they were brown and looked on the way to clone heaven....in just 24 hours i had roots popping out of bottom of cube.....:) As of an hour ago i had started hardening them off....

 

[gudkarma]

love those threads with feedback!

great questions too.

 

[noone88]

Starving your mothers and cycling in new mothers seems to work best for me. Sometimes mothers will just stop cloning. My guess it's due to some unknown stress and the clones lose the hormones to produce roots.

What also works is that when your cuttings have rooted in the cloner and before you transplant, take a rapid rooter, dip it in your nutrient solution, cut it in half, and wrap it gently around the roots before placing it in your media. It has increased my survivability rate even when the clones have barely started to root.

 

[click80]

Starving your mothers and cycling in new mothers seems to work best for me. Sometimes mothers will just stop cloning. My guess it's due to some unknown stress and the the clones lose the hormones to produce roots.

What also works is that when your cuttings have rooted in the cloner and before you transplant, take a rapid rooter, dip it in your nutrient solution, cut it in half, and wrap it gently around the roots before placing it in your media. It has increased my survivability rate even when the clones have barely started to root.

thats one of the things i was worried about. my moms are only about 7 months old. i dont know this for a fact but i would think some warning signs would show first, and maybe this is a sign. i mainly wanted to know about cutting techniques for aerocloners, i really never worried about having a trimmed node in the medium when i was using rrooters. i see why having a node near or at bottom of cutting for aero will help me dial it in better....plus some but not all of the mom's were pruned...im thinking that either this helped by diffusing hmones and/or helped from a stress response; it also could have hurt by putting it in shock. cannot find much info on this.

thanx for the response.

 

[noone88]

There really is no sign when a mother stops producing clones. I think it may have something to do with it being root-bound inside the container and it affects strains differently. Just a guess however.

Either way, it seems like cycling in new mothers as often as possible does remedy the problem.

 

[doubledip]

I'm using the ez clone 60. Very easy. Got it down. 10 gal of RO h20, 10 drops of superthrive, 10ml AN liquid kelp, 400ppm pureblend pro grow, 100ppm cal-mag. Maybe a few extra drops liquid humic/fulvic acid. No root gel or enhancer. Make sure the whole contraption is cleaned and sterilized after every 10 day round. I cut multiple (3 or 4) other diagonal slices into the stem up to an inch from the bottom diagonal cut. 7 to 10 days roots are booming. I have the t5's off to the side where the cloner isnt getting full light at all. I go 1 gal after that. sunshine4. You can have almost 50 transplanted in the 1 gals under 2 t5 8 bulbs @ 10 inches away. move your mothers to the side for this week. I get out 60 every 10 days and end up trashing the weakest looking 10. good luck