Stop cutting your clone stems at a 45! There's a better way to get a white beard growing.

Some strains like MAC are a pain to clone. Strawberry Cough and God Bud are hard to get to root. Zkittlez and Gorilla Glue are ok but I found with bag seed mothers and weak thc strains are so easy with 5 days seeing first roots. My buddy just bought a cloning bucket online and said he has success. I went to a cloner. A bubbler and then after slime and 100% fail after two attempts I converted it to an aero cloner which failed horribly too. I went back to ph'd rockwool cubes and a heated tray with a dome. This time around I got 3 large trays of clones off for my friends and to fill my flower room up 100% success until the mothers root bound. Now im at 14 days with no roots and yellowing(feeding on itself) leaves and before roots were at 7 to 10 days consistently.

I used to be a fan of the aero cloners, and they work great the first couple of times, but keeping the water cool enough, changing out water, jets, cleaning the pumps… I was done. I went to Rapid Rooter trays, and a 2x4 heat mat with a thermostat, and domes… never looked back. Very easy.
@OldMedUser… I’ve taken larf trimming and tilled them into my compost pile, and had volunteers just pop up. One of them was that cane I made for @medicaloutlaw

I had two attempts failed with the slime and then I completely dis- assembled the pump and cleaned everything with a brush and bleach. Sanitized everything again and started running 3 drops per gallon of bleach in the solution. It stopped the slime and so far two of the 7 clones in the cloner have rooted and the others look healthy, just no roots yet. I'm going to switch to pool shock next batch as I have a new recipe for that that is better I think as far as consistency. The bleach did stop them from dying of the stem rot/slime stuff though.

FirstCavApache64 said:

I had two attempts failed with the slime and then I completely dis- assembled the pump and cleaned everything with a brush and bleach. Sanitized everything again and started running 3 drops per gallon of bleach in the solution. It stopped the slime and so far two of the 7 clones in the cloner have rooted and the others look healthy, just no roots yet. I'm going to switch to pool shock next batch as I have a new recipe for that that is better I think as far as consistency. The bleach did stop them from dying of the stem rot/slime stuff though.

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My buddy that got a cloner bucket(aero) had no slime issues, no weird smells. He just used hormex and nothing else. Even after hormex said to use it with your current nutrients he just did that and bought some GH PH down to drop his PH to where the guide he got with the cloner told him to put it at. In my situation, I get mildew smell, slime, clogged piping, slime on the clones and then clones don't grow. I had them in there for a month and they did nothing but look good on top (green foliage) but dead on the bottom. I went back to a simple yield lab clone tray with a heater. I even tried using food grade hydrogen peroxide and that did almost nothing other than give me snake oil hopes.

Your buddies temps could be low enough to not be growing the slime as fast, I don't know. I know that bleach or pool shock or res clear will stop it if you add it every couple days for the bleach. Res clear I can't speak to as I haven't used it. Try 2-3 drops of just plain bleach with no additives or get a bag of chlorine pool shock from Amazon and that'll kill that slimy shit that turns the stems to mush. You probably should flush out the system really well with a high dose of bleach then flush it if you're smelling mildew though. I'd want to sanitize the hell out of everything. Pump, hoses, lines and jets . It's a pain but that stuff is coming from somewhere and keeping the bucket sterile is what matters apparently.

FirstCavApache64 said:

Your buddies temps could be low enough to not be growing the slime as fast, I don't know. I know that bleach or pool shock or res clear will stop it if you add it every couple days for the bleach. Res clear I can't speak to as I haven't used it. Try 2-3 drops of just plain bleach with no additives or get a bag of chlorine pool shock from Amazon and that'll kill that slimy shit that turns the stems to mush. You probably should flush out the system really well with a high dose of bleach then flush it if you're smelling mildew though. I'd want to sanitize the hell out of everything. Pump, hoses, lines and jets . It's a pain but that stuff is coming from somewhere and keeping the bucket sterile is what matters apparently.

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I was thinking the same thing. This is why I stayed away from RDWC. I get foam and slime in the res tank and I have to fight to keep the temps under 68F. I was considering buying a chiller or even running some lines to the back of my fridge and having a heat exchanger inside the fridge to cool the solution down. I just went back to hempy and never looked back. Drain to waste IMO is so easy and I can use more organic bloom boosts like liquid cool bloom and floralicious plus. If I run any of those two in a DWC system, it stinks so bad and causes slime and foam to build up so fast, I can't flush fast enough my plants start dying and looking sick.

rocketdog1989 said:

I was thinking the same thing. This is why I stayed away from RDWC. I get foam and slime in the res tank and I have to fight to keep the temps under 68F. I was considering buying a chiller or even running some lines to the back of my fridge and having a heat exchanger inside the fridge to cool the solution down. I just went back to hempy and never looked back. Drain to waste IMO is so easy and I can use more organic bloom boosts like liquid cool bloom and floralicious plus. If I run any of those two in a DWC system, it stinks so bad and causes slime and foam to build up so fast, I can't flush fast enough my plants start dying and looking sick.

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KoolBloom and Floralicious Plus are not organic. Magnesium phosphate, monopotassium phosphate and potassium sulfate are the ingredients in them. There's also no reason to use both products or either one for that matter. Any decent nutrient already contains the same stuff that's in those products.

Any system I work with that has
any type of reservoir gets HYDROGAURD from Botanicare, even the cap mats. No slime, no stink, happy plants.

Probably the best environment I have found for cloning can be incorporated into your main exhaust if you run a tent/closet/small grow. That exhaust is pumping out two things clones need; lamp heat and unwanted humidity from plant transportation right? Capture it by porting into a tote or some other closed area and light it with a t5 LED. The one I have set up maintains a cloning tote that is 85-90% RH and 75-80 degrees without any standing water to cause issues.

I think the angled cut just makes it easier to stab the stem into a plug/medium. I genuinely don't think it benefits root development in any way.

^^^^

Roots rarely start at the cut, regardless of the angle

Billy the Mountain said:

^^^^

Roots rarely start at the cut, regardless of the angle

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Ok

Cannaclysmic Events said:

Ok
View attachment 5148745

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Is that supposed to show the first roots emerging from the cut section of the clone?

It doesn't

So check this out. I put this out there because I know there's some folks that struggle a bit with this and thought maybe they could apply this info, build on it, whatever. What I didn't expect was a pile on of "experts" with a recap of every haphazard way someone got a couple roots from a dropped top that fell on a dog turd. Only slightly more irritating is the antiqdotal accounts of why this thing I'm sharing doesn't work. Well, I'm a scientist, and there's words we use when something has met the scrutiny of the scientific process. Those words are predictable and repeatable, and I've used them because they apply. Because I just keep churning out root balls that make for the most explosive new growth I've been lucky enough to have. And they all look like this coming out of the box. Barely stressed, no deficiency, beard of uniformly distributed fish bones, ready to rock. Go throw your cuts in the toilet bowl if it works for you, you won't hear me tell you your wrong. But you also won't hear me tell you that you're doing a damn thing to optimize the development and distribution of new roots, or maybe giving someone struggling a method that helps them right their ship; and that's what this is about, not how to get a stringer in a fish bowl. So maybe comment with info that's next level, that builds on ideas, rather than a full throttle reverse back to basic shit. It just doesn't apply, cause I'm cranking these out all day long, predictably and repeatedly.

PopAndSonGrows said:

I think the angled cut just makes it easier to stab the stem into a plug/medium. I genuinely don't think it benefits root development in any way.

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If you use gel and/or rooting powder you can't stab into the soil or it pushes that stuff off the stem so you need to poke a wider hole in first with a pencil or chopstick then place the end in the hole carefully then poke something in the soil beside it to push the soil tight against the stem then water in with a few sprays if the soil was pre-soaked.

I always make sure there is a cleaned off node on the part of the stem that goes in the medium but the roots start anywhere along the stem really.

I use both gel and powder on my cuts and get 100% every time. I take twice as many as I need just in case and end up throwing out the extras which hurts.

Billy the Mountain said:

Is that supposed to show the first roots emerging from the cut section of the clone?

It doesn't

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Use what little imagination you have and draw the lines. It shows they array distributed from the primary and secondary cuts. Maybe check the first image and apply. Or, go do it yourself and come back when you have something of value to add.

OldMedUser said:

If you use gel and/or rooting powder you can't stab into the soil or it pushes that stuff off the stem so you need to poke a wider hole in first with a pencil or chopstick then place the end in the hole carefully then poke something in the soil beside it to push the soil tight against the stem then water in with a few sprays if the soil was pre-soaked.

I always make sure there is a cleaned off node on the part of the stem that goes in the medium but the roots start anywhere along the stem really.

I use both gel and powder on my cuts and get 100% every time. I take twice as many as I need just in case and end up throwing out the extras which hurts.

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I don't waste a thing. Sounds like your method is costly and antiquated

Cannaclysmic Events said:

Use what little imagination you have and draw the lines. It shows they array distributed from the primary and secondary cuts. Maybe check the first image and apply. Or, go do it yourself and come back when you have something of value to add.

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I stated that the roots don't emerge from the cut, you post a pic of a rooted clone in a jiffy pellet as proof otherwise? Read much?

I imagine the roots emerging from the sides of the stem as happens 99% of the time, not through the cut section.

Cannaclysmic Events said:

I don't waste a thing. Sounds like your method is costly and antiquated

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WTF dude I wasn't talking to you. Snotty nosed punks like you can FOAD. I'm not spending money on peat pellets so who's the one wasting money here?

I root mine in the same medium they will grow in. ProMix HP Have done for 20 years and hundreds of clones.

I run a 36 site 'Clone King' with no problems. I use a $5 timer rom Harbor Freight, which has mechanical 15 minute intervals. 15 on 15 off. In deep summer I add a 1/2 pint of ice twice daily. No slime and no hot water. Oh yeah, 98% success ratio!!!

i like aeroponic cloners as well my basement is cold, im also lazy i just drop them in for three weeks and forget about them. after three weeks they go in beer cups. ive never had issues with slime or anything like that.