Clone in hydroton
- Thread starter ohmy
- Start date
Has anyone tried to clone in hydroton ? Good or bad ? will it work or fail ?
Enzogrowspot
Active Member
I took a germinated seed and put it in my power grower and it worked okay. I placed the stem of the seedling between a small piece of rockwool that I split, placed it into my grower and it rooted okay, never tried a clone but I would think it would work better given it's rooted.
you can start in soil and move to hydro, just move when the roots are 4-5 inches long so they can get nutes from the water
Enzogrowspot
Active Member
Yep, for sure bro, I did it that way it just shocked it a little when I moved it, but she's pretty in flower right now..
fmgeek
Active Member
Hi! copying from another, older thread I just posted this too. (Is that stupid? Seems like it might be. Sorry.)
But this thread (as well) seems ambiguous on the subject, and I'd like to clear this matter up.
I just tried a side-by-side comparison, and got amazing results! I think it's because the cloning powder got more time on the stems.
These were all cut at the same time, with the same methods, on 4/1. Today is 4/10. I put most of them in my spray cloner, and just 5 of them in my 3" net pots with hydroton. Same water (1ml/L JumpStart, ph 5.8, 71F,) same water changes, (one, after 6 days) same spray frequency. (30 seconds every 30 minutes.) No lids, humidity varied.. just in my veg room, so.. 40-70rH.
I just moved those 5 back into the spray cloner to make room for vegging plants.
Guess which 5 were in the hydroton?
Pretty hard to argue with these results. Hope you find them useful! I'm now going to make a dedicated hydroton-based cloner. I'm thinking a 14 gallon tote with as many 2" net pots as I can cram into the lid! (Probably about 50.)
Peace.
But this thread (as well) seems ambiguous on the subject, and I'd like to clear this matter up.
I just tried a side-by-side comparison, and got amazing results! I think it's because the cloning powder got more time on the stems.
These were all cut at the same time, with the same methods, on 4/1. Today is 4/10. I put most of them in my spray cloner, and just 5 of them in my 3" net pots with hydroton. Same water (1ml/L JumpStart, ph 5.8, 71F,) same water changes, (one, after 6 days) same spray frequency. (30 seconds every 30 minutes.) No lids, humidity varied.. just in my veg room, so.. 40-70rH.
I just moved those 5 back into the spray cloner to make room for vegging plants.
Guess which 5 were in the hydroton?
Pretty hard to argue with these results. Hope you find them useful! I'm now going to make a dedicated hydroton-based cloner. I'm thinking a 14 gallon tote with as many 2" net pots as I can cram into the lid! (Probably about 50.)
Peace.
I would just like to add to this thread, as I'm currently running a test with cloning in hydroton flood and drain or ebb and flow.
I have a 14 gallon tote as the reservoir and a 10 gallon tote as the grow bed. Floods for 15 minutes and off for 45 minutes, all day, under 24 hour T5 grow lighting. The grow bed is about 8 inches deep and only filled with 5 inches of hydroton and only floods up to 4 inches so the top of the hydroton stays fairly dry to keep alge from growing. A humidity dome from another cloner fits pretty well over the hydroton cloner.
Since this little cloner was and is originally intended to start converting my veg/mom room over to aquaponics, I did not use any root hormone on my current cuttings. I am just using tap water(ph 7.1) with some maxicrop(liquid seaweed), and will eventually add some ammonia to start the nitrogen cycle. I would like to lower the ph a little, but I think it will be fine for now... we'll see.
We'll see how fast roots develop, took the cuttings on 11/2/12. Will report back when roots pop. The cutting so far are loving the hydoton flood and drain, no wilting at all at day 1, 2 or 3 and I haven't needed to spray water on them at all. Looks like this is going to work out very well, and if it does, this may become my main method for taking cuttings once my main aquaponic system is up and running.
I have a 14 gallon tote as the reservoir and a 10 gallon tote as the grow bed. Floods for 15 minutes and off for 45 minutes, all day, under 24 hour T5 grow lighting. The grow bed is about 8 inches deep and only filled with 5 inches of hydroton and only floods up to 4 inches so the top of the hydroton stays fairly dry to keep alge from growing. A humidity dome from another cloner fits pretty well over the hydroton cloner.
Since this little cloner was and is originally intended to start converting my veg/mom room over to aquaponics, I did not use any root hormone on my current cuttings. I am just using tap water(ph 7.1) with some maxicrop(liquid seaweed), and will eventually add some ammonia to start the nitrogen cycle. I would like to lower the ph a little, but I think it will be fine for now... we'll see.
We'll see how fast roots develop, took the cuttings on 11/2/12. Will report back when roots pop. The cutting so far are loving the hydoton flood and drain, no wilting at all at day 1, 2 or 3 and I haven't needed to spray water on them at all. Looks like this is going to work out very well, and if it does, this may become my main method for taking cuttings once my main aquaponic system is up and running.
Another update:
Well, cloning in Hydroton works, but probably not the fastest/ideal way to go. I had one strain pop roots in 10 day, and 3 others in 20 days.
There could be contributing factors as to why rooting was so slow. I discovered root aphids in my grow bed, which I found eating away at the one root that popped on one of the slower ones... damn thing was infested. Not exactly sure how I'm going to eradicate these bastards since I've already started the aquaponics and practically no insecticide is safe for the fish. Luckily it's still in the beginning stages so I just pulled all of the rooted clones I had in the grow bed and disposed of them. I then flooded the grow bed above the level of the hydroton to hopefully drowned them, which seemed to work on most of them but there are still a few active ones. I also lined the top of the grow bed with sticking non drying insect glue to ensure they would not be able to crawl out. Luckily none of them are able to fly, no wings. Next I'll let the grow bed completely dry out for at least one month before I start to cycle it again. Hopefully this will get rid of them without insecticides.
Once the pests are gone I'll run another cloning in hydroton test...
Well, cloning in Hydroton works, but probably not the fastest/ideal way to go. I had one strain pop roots in 10 day, and 3 others in 20 days.
There could be contributing factors as to why rooting was so slow. I discovered root aphids in my grow bed, which I found eating away at the one root that popped on one of the slower ones... damn thing was infested. Not exactly sure how I'm going to eradicate these bastards since I've already started the aquaponics and practically no insecticide is safe for the fish. Luckily it's still in the beginning stages so I just pulled all of the rooted clones I had in the grow bed and disposed of them. I then flooded the grow bed above the level of the hydroton to hopefully drowned them, which seemed to work on most of them but there are still a few active ones. I also lined the top of the grow bed with sticking non drying insect glue to ensure they would not be able to crawl out. Luckily none of them are able to fly, no wings. Next I'll let the grow bed completely dry out for at least one month before I start to cycle it again. Hopefully this will get rid of them without insecticides.
Once the pests are gone I'll run another cloning in hydroton test...