Clones are having a difficult time starting

I've had a great cloning record (I'd say 98% success rate over 7 grows), but I'm having some trouble this time.

I've got cheese and super silver haze. They looked really healthy for the first week but slowly started to loose their vigor. It's been over two weeks now and they still aren't showing their roots.

I am using a different cloning technique this time but I can't imagine it's the technique that's causing the issue. My guess is it's one thing I've got going on that's causing issues.

The cloner I had built before used drip sprayers (just like an aero-cloner), but I decided to go with a different setup. This time I'm doing it with DWC. My stems are barely in the water and the stones produce a large amount of bubbles via 75w commercial air pump (this isn't the only thing running off that one pump...it's got a 12 station manifold that I use for my DWC buckets).

I would always use peat pods for my clones. This time I'm using neoprene collars. They are quite tight around the stems. Could they be too tight?

I can't remember if I balanced my water with previous clones, but I have the water balanced at 6.0 for this one. Should the water be balanced?

I have never had to score the sides of the stem to promote rooting, but I would do that now if it would help.

Big question...are my clones salvagable? They still have lots of green in them, but the leaves are starting to curl up under and loose their color.

Give it time. If they start to die, then the cloner might be one to blame. Also, if you say that your stems are barely in the rez, you should probably get them in the water more.

Should I have the air stones going or should they just be in calm water?

the stems should be out of the water so they get O2 but the HAVE to have plenty of water splashed up on them. thats why i went back to the sprayers. If the stems are too big for the neoprene, i just set the neoprene pucks over the hole, i dont press it down in the hole. that way the only force on the stem is from the neoprene and not any extra force from squeezing it into the hole. And FYI if your cuttings are small enough (thin enough stems) you can put 3 cuts to a neoprene puck i have noticed the smaller my cuttings are the quicker they root. about 5 days for really small cuts, 7-8 days for medium(5-6inches) and about 2 weeks for tops

or maybe its too much O2 and they should be in the water more??? try half of the cloner one way and the other half another

I think I may go back to my other cloner. I've had the best results using it so why mess with perfection.

Exactly. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Each method requires time to dial in. so if you already have one method on lock, there should really be no reason to switch it up.

I hear ya. I set my old box back up, slightly scored the lower part of the stems and dipped 'em in rooting gel. I'm betting they'll take off now. In this cloner I would have roots showing in as little as 3 days.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but as long as the babies have plenty of green in them, they should still be fine, right? They wouldn't have any stress that would keep them from rooting now, would they?

Green is good. Only when you start to see signs of Nitrogen deficiency should you start to apply nutes.

Can anyone tell me if they recognize the problem causing this...