I didnt reply to that at a great time and it came across kinda snarky.
What I was talking about is they sell little pucks of coco that you just add like a cup of water to and they expand into usable coco. Add some perlite to that to loosen the mixture up a bit and youre good to go.
Rooters work, so does rockwool, but there is a learning curve to both of them in keeping the moisture level just right. They require too much attention to be all that practical to me. Putting a seedling with either into a netpot full of hydroton just sucks. The period while the roots grow out and down into the water is pretty miserable imo. Lots of people kill their plants in this stage. If you dont do it just right, the roots will grow out into the netpot and take weeks to reach water or your plug/cube will soak up too much water and drown your plant ect.
I have tried every method of seedling starting and transfer into r/dwc systems that ive been able to find out there. In all of my experimentation and failures, 1 method stood out way above the rest.
coco+perlite in some double layer seed trays with a vented humidity dome. 5-7 days after they pop out of the coco, you pull or dig them up and put them in a cloner to let them grow roots for a few weeks. Once they have like 10" roots you transfer them into the buckets by feeding the roots through a small hole in the bottom of your netpot and gently filling in around them with hydroton. I have a little plastic seedling tool that makes it easy todig up some of the coco around them. Some of them that I pulled earlier, were just a straight down taproot. They were loose enough that you could pick up right up out of the coco with no resistance.
If you already have some rooters, shredding some of them up as
@Airwalker16 suggested could work. The perlite mixed in really loosens the mixture up and makes it easy to pull them out though.
