Al B. Fuct
once had a dog named
Before using 40mm cubes for cloning, they should be soaked in a bucket of 5.0 water for 24h. This soaking soln is removed before plugging stems in the material, as I said last page:
If you don't pre-soak the small cubes used for cloning, strike rates may be poorer, but once roots are formed and growign vigorously, they should do OK in the non-pre-soaked cubes.
Clear now?
Now, while I do pre-soak my 40mm cubes which I use for cloning, I used pots of RW floc as my main media for many years, but I never pre-soaked it. It was simply too hard to drain a pre-soak soln from a 175mm pot of the material. As a result, my tank pH would rise about .1-.2 every 4-5 days. I expect you can get away with not pre-soaking your RW blocks. What size blocks do you have?Yes, your RW cubes should be soaked for 24h before use in water adjusted to 5.0. This acidic, low pH pre-soak solution is intended to react with the limestone dust which remains in the material after mfg, thus stabilising pH later on. However, 5.0 is too low for the plants, so remove as much of this soln as possible from the cubes with a salad spinner or by shaking water out of the cube with a sharp snap of the wrist. The salad spinner is preferred, prevents 'tennis elbow' if you're shaking water out of a lot of cubes, removes more of the pre-soaking soln as well.
Subsequent watering should be done with water adjusted to 5.8 and with 50% grade H2O2 @ 1ml/L. A bucket of clone watering soln should be re-dosed with H2O2 every 3-4 days.
If you don't pre-soak the small cubes used for cloning, strike rates may be poorer, but once roots are formed and growign vigorously, they should do OK in the non-pre-soaked cubes.
Clear now?