Hi all!
I’ve done two successful grows with fem seeds in soil and recently obtained a bunch of great used growing equipment.
Included are a propogator, cloner, and RDWC system.
I’ve got small and large rock wool cubes and clay pebbles. The net pots in the cloner are small which I can jam a small cube into and the pots on the RDWC are large, 6" or so.
I’ve got a mother plant ready to clone from, but I’ve never cloned or used hydroponics! Ive watched lots of videos online but still not 100% sure how to move from one system to another.
Do I need to start the clones in cubes in the propagator, then when roots show jam cubes into net pots of cloner, then when roots are healthy move cube over to RDWC and fill in with pebbles?
Or, can I skip the propagator and start clones straight in the cloner? If so do I still use rock wool cubes?
Or, is it better to start clones in the propagator? In which case can I go straight into the RDWC?
Here’s a couple pics to give you an idea of the setup.
Any other suggestions, links to resources, or insights are greatly appreciated!
I would skip the rockwhool for cloning and get some neoprene collars to hold plants…
At least at this point , if alls your doing is taking clones…
Bring water level up to a 1/2 inch of the stems being submerged…
I like the stem to be a 1/2 inch in the water… never an air embolism and never drowns…
Should see roots in a week or so.
Plenty of oxygen in the water…
@peachfuzz, thanks man! I’ve been kicking around the forum since October 2018.
So, you suggest skipping the propagator stage then? Only thing is, it has a humidity dome.
Is it cool to skip humidity dome on the cloner? Or I guess I could fit the dome over it.
I’ll fashion some collars from foam cutouts.
And yep I’ve got 4 air stones and an air pump for O2!
Hey dudes!
Did cloning work this evening.
Put some very very light nutrients in the reservoir (took ppm up from 80 to 195), pH to 5.8, and used cloning powder.
Lined up clones so they had a bit of stem in the water.
Here are some pics. If anything appears off please let me know!!
I got this RDWC setup used. The guy said I’d probably need to touch up the caulking because it did some separating during the move. Should I just strip out all the existing caulking that you can see in this pic, and redo? Seems like he went overboard with the caulking…
Roots all seem healthy to me. How soon should I move them over into the dwc rig?
Also, should I up my nutrient content of the cloner reservoir? Currently at around 360ppm
I would move them once the roots are long enough to reach the water in their final DWC home. If they are long enough to reach, then go ahead and move them over. How big will the net pots be that you will be using?
Right on. 6 inch net pots. I’m also heading out of town all of next week, so I could either transfer them on the weekend or a week later.
I think what I’ll do is bump up the nutrients in the cloner to 500ppm and leave it for another week unless you disagree.
Cheers!
I think that’s okay - the plants look mature enough to handle that. What kind of water are you using?
Biggest issue with leaving them for a week will be PH drifting - so I would make sure you refresh the reservoir a couple days before you leave, and make sure to PH it back to 5.8 and ensure it settles down over a 24 hour period before leaving.
I’d hate to see you come back home to a PH of 7 and plants that are crispy.
Copy that!
Thanks muchly for the help. There’s just so much science and nuance that goes into growing that I’m constantly in awe of. Starting hydroponics is exciting but it’s also a bit daunting as my previous limited experience is in gardening and soil based grows. But it definitely appeals to my engineer brain and I’m loving all these new skills I’m learning!
The equipment I bought (diy RDWC) came with a yellow hose plumbed into the pipe running between the two end buckets, and I’ve seen in-line pumps pulling that water and dumping into the res, but the pump that came with it does not have the ability to do in line. So would it be best to submersible pump from res into the yellow hose?
Alternatively he also had this manifold glued together to be able to run from the submersible pump to four lines that I can waterfall into each bucket.
Which approach makes the most sense?
Here’s a concept of the two approaches:
That’s the problem that nobody is getting…
In line plants and separate plant container’s suck…
It’s more trouble then it’s worth…
Every individual plant sight is going to have a different ph , ppm and water temperature…
No matter what you do…
I use 6 plant sight with 27 gallon totes for flower with two 5 gallon reservoirs … one res dumps into another reservoir for mixing and is gravity fead through plant tote and then gravity fead back to resovior #1 and pumped back into resovior #2 to repeat the whole process again…
All plants get the same ph , ppm and water temperature when using a setup like mine…
