Unsuccessful Cloning, Please Help! All Advice Welcomed.

Hey All,

I'm in the middle of my first real attempt at hydroponic growing... The first phase went pretty smoothly... I successfully grew a few mother plants and am now attempting to clone from them...

My first attempt had mixed results. Many of the clone leaves pretty much got super crispy and yellow because apparently I put them under too much light too soon. I ended up moving a few of these to my flood table and they seem to be rebounding.

I tried taking a second set of clones with the hopes they'd come out better. I completely removed the light above them and just used ambient light from the 400 W MH I'm currently using for my mothers. This time, they don't seem to be turning yellow and crispy but instead, they are withering! Some of them even have leaves that appear to be turning black! I'm not sure what i'm doing wrong...

I'm using aeroponics to grow my clones. I have an ez cloner 16 and two 5 gallon bucks with a 8 site lids. I'm using RO water, ph'd to about 5.8 and dipped my cuttings in clonex after making the cuts. I've been using Mother Plant nutrients for my moms and didn't add any nutes to the clone reservoirs... I've have been adding Clear Rez to the reservoir every 5 days. I'm not sure if anyone will be able to diagnose exactly what I'm doing wrong but i've included some pictures with the hopes that someone with more experience has come across this before.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post! Happy growing....

I personally use a dome over the top for the first week at least. I also spray them and the dome twice a day with ph'd water. Helps keeping the humidity up and everything moist.
My friend swears by the 100$ bottle of root exelerator but i never use it.
You may also want to consider buying one of those t5 veg lights.
Sun blasters or whatever they are called $50 at the shop round here.

I had pretty good success with clones with just a dome lid on a container. Now have built a mister cloner where the roots are sprayed with a fine mist. And I expect to get 100% success out of it. With no lid at all. Using tap water and some cloning powder under one regular light bulb. Seems to be all the light they need untill they start to root

I think the question here is what's going on inside the buckets? You using a pump spraying water? Is the sprayer head spinning free? Are you relying on the splashes zone from an air pump? etc.

How long are the stems? You could leave a bit more stem up at the top. You might be pinching them in the pucks. Also, you don't need so many water leaves.

Water temp?

I dont PH the cloning water and i dont add anything to the water. If i was you i would clean everything good and use plain water and very low light

Look bro cloning is not hard and no matter what you read people have been doing this for years right... so its not hard IT"S NOT HARD! so don't over think it
go to your hardware store of hardware to or anywhere you can get Jiffy's from PH the water from 6-6.5 or don't even PH them... drop the Jiffy

This is what i do and i have 100% rate i per soak my Jiffy at 6.0 i take cuttings then i cut on a 45% angle like they always say i dip in cloning gel
i leave them for 30 secs at this time i make a small hole in the jiffy a put a little cloning gel in then i put the cutting in and with in 6-10 days i have roots fuck all the new age shit just do what works if you want to do hydro its okay you still can they willl still grow in rockwool perlite or clay

do you have airstones in your water? are you running sprayers all the time? 15 on 15 off will keep water temps down, 2 on 10 off works even better but requires an expensive timer.

Started learning to clone almost 10 years ago. I've seen and admired various "auto-cloning" devices since. After gathering as much info as possible I decided that auto-cloners produce more problems than traditional cloning that employed a dome and pellets. DWC cloning is to traditional cloning like hydro grows are to dirt grows -- more complicated and less successful. So I went with the dome.

In case you feel me here is some getting-started-cloning-the old-way tips:

* Domes come in various sizes, find the tallest ones you can find.
* Clone moms should be at least 5 weeks in dirt or success rates go way down.
* Trim the cuttings larger leaves so that it appears no wider than a tennis ball when viewed from above.
* Keep at least a half inch water standing in the dome at all times. You want to maintain a relative humidity as close to 100% as possible. Means you should see
condensation inside the dome every time you check. No condensation = you have a problem.
* Keep a spray bottle with room temp. water handy and spray clone leaves a couple times a day. Without roots they require leaf spraying and high humidity to access
the water they need.
* I prefer the larger 2-inch jiffy pellets as the larger pellets allow you to use larger cuttings. Larger clones root better than small clones. Has to do with how many square inches of leaf space is available to hydrate the cuttings.

Good luck, BigSteve.

chuck estevez said:

do you have airstones in your water? are you running sprayers all the time? 15 on 15 off will keep water temps down, 2 on 10 off works even better but requires an expensive timer.

Click to expand...

Should I have airpumps in the res? I currently do not... Also, my pump runs 24/7-would it be more beneficial to put them on a 15on/off timer? Despite how they look, im starting to see the beginnings of some roots pop out. Just at about the 10 day mark...

Mtenda said:

Should I have airpumps in the res? I currently do not... Also, my pump runs 24/7-would it be more beneficial to put them on a 15on/off timer? Despite how they look, im starting to see the beginnings of some roots pop out. Just at about the 10 day mark...

Click to expand...

air pumps, ABSOLUTELY, asap. 15 on and off would get you roots faster