Building 2 tub dwc

[Yesdog]

Man, yea I lost my first.... 15 clones, then i had a 4/5 success rate, now im at 10/10 on this last batch. Things i started doing differently, one or all of them seemed to help a bunch:

a) Bubble-bucket hasn't changed much, jsut a 5gal bucket with air stones and RapidStart. Underside of lid should be wet- i did that screw that up a few times. Using way more water now and the lid gets much more wet. This is probably the least important part for getting em to root. Just need something to wet the stems lol
b) no dome- just spraying a few times a day. They wilt for a day or 2, then pop back ('m in a very dry area too). If any leaves look perma-fucked, i trim em at that point. Light trim beforehand- leaving one growth node and a set of fan leaves. Lightly trim fan leaves.
c) Marring/scratch the stem- this is probably the biggest thing i started to do. I started cutting into the step just a little bit (so it makes 2 slashes across the stem), and I'd scrape up the lower part of the stem with the blade. A bunch. The stem looks like a fucking horror movie.
d) Coating the stem in dry rooting compound + great white. I think this might have been the key (plus the scratching in step C). The dry rooting compound is insoluble, and when mixed with great white it makes this nice microbe-rich pasty scab. I coat the stem with that, and watch to see how much of it runs off the next day or 2 (the bubbler gets it only semi-wet). If the 'scab' stayed really well stuck (and looks dry) and the plant looks droopy, ill spray the 'scab' a bit to get it wet and pasty again (some of it does come off, but not all of it. seems like you want a thin layer, so i use the spray bottle to adjust it down where its not totally blocking the stem from the water). So basically you want the paste layer to look wet, and brown (but not washed off). I'll get bumps in about 3 days, roots in 6.
e) 24 hour light. This might be just because i took clones from flowering plants, but I keep a constant (weak) light going.

The last 10/10 clones I did were also late late into flowering, still with 100% success. Got a bunch of clones sticking around with new growth coming out of the buds (which is so odd). I have 1 clone with literally 0 fan leaves, just a bud and sugar leaves. Has big nasty roots.

@Reggie Jr. - dude, go to google and look up ice tube cloner - you use an ice tube tray for making ice cubes made to fit into water bottles. You but them at walmart. buy you some vermiculite and and drill small holes in the bottom of the ice tubes. use a tupperware container and put in a little bit of water to make it go about 1/8-1/2 inch of water to allow the ice tubes full of vermiculite to bottom water. this has worked for me 100 percent of the time. it's so simple and no dome or nutrients needed. i don't even ph the water.

There's so many good machines/methods for cloning. I think it's probably one of the less important parts- just need something that keeps the stem anywhere between sorta wet and really wet. I stuck with my janky bubble cloner (an ace hardware bucket covered in black tape lol) just because it doesn't keep the stems 'too' wet. This allows the paste to more gradually slough off over a few days.

EDIT: its all black magic though lol

 

[whitey78]

I like and will eventually be implementing these for vegging mothers for ease of use... but if u wanted to set it up to run 2 strains im sure it's possible but I prefer to run a single plant per dwc setup as if/when you have an issue with 1; you'll usually end up having the same issue with all the plants in the system...

http://hightimes.com/grow/how-to-build-a-two-bucket-dwc-system/

It's obviously to meant to be used with 5 gallon buckets and uniseals but it can be made with just about any containers of any size... just if u make something using square containers you'll need bulkhead fittings rather than uniseals...

 

[Yesdog]

hah, very off topic at this point, but I just beat my record with the cloning. Got all excited lol Took down this whole plant yesterday, decided i wanted another clone of it. literally after about 36 hours i had roots:

You can see what I'm talking about with the 'brown scab', just dry (insoluble) rooting hormone and great white (dry powders mixed together very well), slathered all over a scraped and scratched stem. The thing wilted to almost nothing over the night, now its back, with roots!

The cloning bucket is janky as hell, but I really think its more about the prep at this point.

 

[whitey78]

hah, very off topic at this point, but I just beat my record with the cloning. Got all excited lol Took down this whole plant yesterday, decided i wanted another clone of it. literally after about 36 hours i had roots:

You can see what I'm talking about with the 'brown scab', just dry (insoluble) rooting hormone and great white (dry powders mixed together very well), slathered all over a scraped and scratched stem. The thing wilted to almost nothing over the night, now its back, with roots!

The cloning bucket is janky as hell, but I really think its more about the prep at this point.

When you say prep:.. do u mean as far as the mother or the cut/clone itself? I've said it a million times that I've had 2 week or less success with massive root and ready for whatever it was to be planted in for years and then once I moved, my times and success rate dropped like a rock off the Empire State Building... I can only attribute it to the different water, or what I'm feeding the mothers... every time I run a batch of clones I haven't ran yet at my new place, i start a dwc mother of each...summer is gonna give me hell but maybe I'll switch back to dirt in the summer months or figure out a way to chill each...???... no idea yet... but I figure if it is what I'm feeding the mothers I can tailor what I'm feeding them a little easier/faster with dwc/hydro...

 

[Yesdog]

When you say prep:.. do u mean as far as the mother or the cut/clone itself? I've said it a million times that I've had 2 week or less success with massive root and ready for whatever it was to be planted in for years and then once I moved, my times and success rate dropped like a rock off the Empire State Building... I can only attribute it to the different water, or what I'm feeding the mothers... every time I run a batch of clones I haven't ran yet at my new place, i start a dwc mother of each...summer is gonna give me hell but maybe I'll switch back to dirt in the summer months or figure out a way to chill each...???... no idea yet... but I figure if it is what I'm feeding the mothers I can tailor what I'm feeding them a little easier/faster with dwc/hydro...

At least with my case, prepping the cuttings themselves. Up until the last few clones I did, I felt like mother-prep was really important. But the last round was taken from plants that were just ready to take down, or already taken down and sat around for a bit lol. And the plants were already flushing for several days before hand (maybe 200-300 ppm). Like I was having to trim off wilted and yellow leaves before prepping the cutting (but after removed). They were all taken right after lights-out tho, so that might have something to do with it. The sugar content is suppose to be at its peak then. I'm also heavily relying on spraying the cuttings- I've had wilted cuts pop back in maybe 3 hours after being sprayed. So as far as the myth of keeping lights out for fresh clones, I don't think it really matters. If the water spray made them pop back up- it means they're taking in water from the leaves. If they're getting water, they can photosynthesize. And because im not using a dome, the clones surface dries pretty quick so im not really introducing opportunity for damping off. Even some of my clones with full buds on em.

This is easily my favorite lol. It's a bud with roots, waiting for another few inches of roots then its going into my mothers dwc:

I started a thread with my new-fangled cloning theory here:

https://www.rollitup.org/t/scratch-and-paste-cloning.929435

 

[Yesdog]

That is super odd that you can't clone since the move...

how do the cuttings end up dead? Wet noodle, or wilted leaves?

Has to be something pathogenic, or in your water I'd guess. Was it tap at both places?

 

[whitey78]

That is super odd that you can't clone since the move...

how do the cuttings end up dead? Wet noodle, or wilted leaves?

Has to be something pathogenic, or in your water I'd guess. Was it tap at both places?

Yeah I think I got it traced down to the water... I always used tap in my previous location, both are municipal water but for whatever reason they just wouldn't root at the new place... I've been trying to get on a 2 week cycle, harvest comes out, batch of clones go in. I am just over the 2 week time frame now, my last batch is actually good to go exactly at the 2 week mark but I gotta do some cleaning and prepping as I've ran a whole cycle through the room and I'd like to clean and bug spray the perimeter and shit but I got sick a few days ago so I'm on e for no energy...

But what ended up working for me was using ro water... Normally I try to conserve on it because it's so wasteful and never needed it for cloning... At my previous setups I'd have mothers in supersoil which is loaded with nutrition so I'm kinda stumped if it's nutritional.. But I think the ro and rapid start is gonna be the ticket... Best root formation by far this round and by 2 weeks the fastest... I wasn't able to do get a plantable batch of clones in less than 20-30 days...and only getting a 50% success rate if that... I bought new neoprene pucks, cleaned it insanity like... I tried a few different things but my only savior was ro and rapid start.... Once I get some solid successful runs through I'm gonna try cutting out the rapid start n see how it goes... This current batch had 1 that didn't make it out of 60, and I mean lovely bushy roots like I've never seen, they used to just get real long but these are the best roots I've gotten to date I'd say...