Hey AL, could you tell us more about setting up flood tables. I am using DWC (bubbleponics tanks) And as we had discussed transplanting is not easy, but BTW everything that I did move showed no signs of damage. I had to risk it, but it turned out ok. I am looking to setup something in minds of expansion. I only have my flowering chamber now, and while I have noticed that hydro clones will root in 12/12, my attempts in soil, have not been as good to me. I was thinking soil, because of ease and it's supposed to be the beginners way. But I have the hydro, going great and with ease. And I think I am just not using the right soil. Cause even the soil shows growth, but growth with bad fert. ya know. Well if anything, give us some ideas to a setting up floods with a low budget in mind.
First, you need to make up a clonebox.
An old plywood shipping container is ideal. Look behind businesses that sell large or heavy articles (found mine behind a place that sells big-arsed commercial fire pumps) for discarded containers.
Failing that, buy a few bits of 2x4 for the frame & a sheet of plywood (MDF or particle board will
not do- humidity & water splashes will trash these materials quickly) and whack one together. This ain't furniture grade carpentry, just make it strong enough to hang together.
You might also use a large (125L or bigger) plastic storage container.
My clonebox is just a miniature grow room with a heatmat. Lined with stolen... err...
surplus Coroplast/Corflute real-estate signs.
Corflute is super durable, cleanable, tolerates frequent sterilisation with 10% bleach solution. There's 3x 24" twin-tube fluoro fixtures and a thermostatically controlled exhaust fan, set for 26.5C. The heatmat is fixed 30C temp, no thermostat dial.
Lights run 24/0 but I do have a timer on them so I can give the clones 6 hours of darkness right after doing a batch of cuttings. This helps them establish water uptake through the stem cuts, before having to cope with transpiration caused by exposure to light without yet having a root system, even though these tube fluoros were deliberately chosen to be weak & gentle. Clones need not be pounded with light, they only need to be convinced it is daylight for 18+h/day to keep them in veg mode. Doesn't take much light for that.
Keeping clones in a high humidity environment to prevent wilt is not necessary if the kids can get good water uptake through their stem cuts.
If your scalpel was not fully sterile or your media is overwet, you will see wilt about 3-5 days after cutting. No problem, recut them with a sterile scalpel and use H2O2, 50% grade @ 1ml/L in your clone watering solution and you won't see it again, as long as you don't repeat the overwet medium condition.
The controlled environment with heat mat, along with getting your watering right (medium must be only damp, never wet or saturated), will raise your success rate to nearly 100% every time.
A 40mm cube weighs 5g dry and 20-25g when properly damp. Heavier is too wet and will not leave enough oxygen in the cube to encourage quick rooting.
When I lose cuttings, it's usually due to imperfect RW cubes. I buy a 2250 ct carton of 40mm cubes once every couple of years. Some cubes, even within the same carton, are not very dense and won't form well around the stems. The fit around the stems has to be tight.
I water clones by dipping
only a corner of the cubes for about 1 sec into a bucket of clone watering solution.
The watering solution is simply tapwater with 1ml/L H2O2 and pH adjusted to 5.8.
Your next project is to cordon off a small area with panda film to raise your mum/s. It will need a thermostatically controlled exhaust fan, a circ fan and a small HPS. I use a 400 to run 10 mums, but I might be able to get by with a 250.
Hydroponics
is easy, but there
are startup costs and you do have to go a bit out of your way to get the right stuff. If you plan well and shop well, it's an investment that will pay for itself over and over for many years.
While short-lived substitutes can be bunged together, I don't recommend trying to bodge up your own flood trays. They tend to develop leaks- and grief. Proper vacuformed plastic trays are not that expensive and last for years. I pay $52 for 900mm x 900mm trays. Shop around.
Lots of alternatives for media. You can use lava rock (from hdwe, landscaper or BBQ sply) instead of clay pellets, but I suspect pellets are cheaper, even at the hydro shop. Pellets are lighter weight and somewhat re-usable if you can be bothered to clean & sterilise them, which is best done by hand. These types are not absorbent and require flooding several times per light-on cycle.
Lightweight, disposable, absorbent media like rockwool floc and Fytocell only need flooding 1-2x per lights-on and are easier to dispose of in common rubbish than heavyweight alternatives. May also be sold also at bldg sply houses as insulation. Fibreglas will work in a pinch as a substitute absorbent medium but poses well-known hazards and should always be kept damp to keep fibres from floating about. Using disposable media prevents transmission of root diseases and bugs from batch to batch, important in a constant output op like mine. Downside is you have to buy & dispose of it. Small price to pay IMNSFHO for the reliability of plants in pots of absorbent media.
You will spend a few hundred bucks setting up a competent op. You can shave costs by using converted HPS security lighting with home made reflectors, use the shop's brand of hydro nutes and buy 50% grade H2O2 in 25L bulk containers ($5/L instead of $12-20+/L for little 250ml-1L bottles at Ye Olde Hydroe Shoppe, 25L lasts me 6-8 mos with my 550L of tanks which are dumped biweekly & dosed every 3-4 days). Don't skimp on pH & EC metering. Strip pH tests ballpark you but are hard to use and are not that accurate. Get proper electronic meters for hydroponics. There's very cheap ones around if you look (even Ebay). Don't worry about distilled or RO water.
.
i hope that made sense
and enjoy
) yields some cuttings on 1 June. Let's call those cuts 'Batch A.' 
, so there's no concerns there. 
