Ice-tube cloner from WallyWorld

BudleyDoRight sez:

I discovered something that I think could be a valuable tool in cloning your plant... and thought I should post what Ive found...

The good thing about the cloner is its less than 3 bucks and works like a charm....

I will be building this thread with pics providing some info on cloning.....

I will be reserving the first few posts for the purpose...


Finally the first 3 pics....



The cloner comes in two parts.... the white part... the tubes are similar to 1/2" pvc....

The blue part are like rubberized bottom caps to hold in the medium....





The only modification I made to what I bought from walmart is drilling 3 small holes(1/32") bit in each of the bottom caps.... took about 3-5 minutes....

Once done I put both pieces back together and its ready for action....

I wrote numbers on all the wells for use with different plants etc....
In this pic the caps are on the bottom...

Ok now its time for the medium....

I use only fine grade vermiculite.... I think that its important to the success....

The pic shows the cloner filled with vermiculite.... I buy my vermiculite and perlite for that matter at Lowes.... they have big bags for cheap... 2 cu ft like 10 - 12 bucks.....

and its sitting in a small container which I fill so there is about an inch or so of water above the blue bottom caps... refill before the water level reaches the bottom blue cap...

The water wicks up the medium and within 5 minutes the vermiculite is moist and ready for clones....

I slightly compress the vermiculite with my finger tip prior to putting plants in to firm up the medium in the top inch or so.... adding more vermiculite as needed...

And here is the cloner with 10 clones in it....

If Im taking clones and it isnt a mother plant.... they will come from the bottom branches.... I use 3-4 inch branch tips....


The little green sword is to make a stem hole in the vermiculite a nail or something similar would work just fine....

Make sure that after the clone is in the vermiculite the vermiculite is in good contact with the clones stem press the medium up to the stem with your finger tip...

I think you can tell from this pic that the vermiculite is fine grade...

Notes on how I clone....

I use clonex gel...

This cloner is pretty moist so I dont need to do misting or use a dome....
normally the only maintenance takes 15 seconds to add some water to the resevoir... thats it..... the easiest cloner in the world????

The vermiculite once the cloner is done is used in my normal soil mix... so there isnt any waste....

I have used this with one clone per well and 2 with smaller clones.....

or 27 or 54 clones per device....

I would also expect this could support much larger clones as well being a moist method....

I use indirect lighting and it works very fast.....

Ah yes....

As someone pointed out....

Its not a real cloner for the purpose.... its found at walmart in the ice cube tray area.... made for water bottles.... so the ice will fit into the opening of the water bottle.... its all dishwasher safe....

I would advise cleaning the cloner after each batch..

by the way.... once you drill the holes you cant use this for making ice 'cubes'
lol....

The most difficult thing was finding a rectangular plastic container reservoir with the right footprint.....

Prior to this method I was using a wick cloning method and had been for some years...

The advantage here is no wicks the medium itself serves as the wick...

Because the tubes are fairly long they can sit above the waterline of the reservoir but still have lots of water.... but not too much .... the goldylocks principle....


By the way.... this cloner is suitable for hydro methods as well as soil.....

the vermiculite rinses pretty cleanly out of the roots....

I use vermiculite but I suspect a fine grade of perlite would work as well....
I did an experiment where I used perlite later in the thread...and found clearly in my opinion vermiculite works better....


In my case I generally remove the cuttings to see if I have roots on day 7 or 8... If they have roots they go into a slightly overmoist(about the same as the cloner) soil... if they have no roots they are put back into the cloner for another day or so.... I am quick to transplant....

if the transplant soil is moist there is no problem with survival.... wilting generally means the soil isnt moist enough...

I transplant into smallish clear plastic cups.... when they have rooted sufficiently they are transplanted again....

An alternate method of taking the rooted clones would be to leave them in for a few extra days than I do but to replace the water reservoir with a weak hydroponic solution for a few days at about day 7... I remove them as soon as I can so they can be fed... if they are fed in the cloner they could have a more developed root system...

Temps.... I recently bought an aquarium thermometer my cloner sits on a surface of about 83 Degrees F... 28c... It was really cheap and since temps are probably the biggest reason for failure I highly recommend spending 3 bucks on one... Mine was from walmart....

Since my clones root very fast I suggest you try that temp or even a couple degrees higher..... if the temps are too high you might get damp off or slimey bottoms.... then drop the temps a bit....

those are ice cube trays for bottles i presume?

i sort of feel cheated, like promise of a big news story and then cut to commercial first.

cool ! i am going to try this, as cloning is proving to be a problem for me . thanks .

Its not a real cloner for the purpose.... its found at walmart in the ice cube tray area.... made for water bottles.... so the ice will fit into the opening of the water bottle.... its all dishwasher safe....

If you find cloning difficult try this....

There is no mystery...

I use vermiculite from lowes...

The cloner(water bottle ice maker) from walmart...

a 1/32 drill bit....

and clonex....

everything is very available.....

I wont show pics of roots....

Youve all seen them....

but once someone else tries this maybe they will.....

thanks.. that was a great idea

I registered just to spread the idea....

It really works well.... I couldnt be more pleased with the thing...

Highly recommended...

why go thru all that? just buy sum rapid rooter plugs and a small greenhouse ,,less than 20 bux ,,,no constuction necesary...these things work like magic..i went from doing stuff like this with little sucess to a 80 percent strike ratio,,,just my humble opinion
http://www.wormsway.com/detail.asp?sku=RST300

budlydoright,
I like the method. I might try it. I've been needing such a method. thanx.

bldgry,
You have to buy the replacement plugs. This way saves some money in the long run over the rapid rooter, since you are using the vermiculite in the soil anyway. No need the buy refills.

I have in fact tried a number of methods....

I have tried bubble cloners and rapid rooter plugs....

My first batch of rapid rooter plugs dried out and died...

Here is one of the comments from your link...

Date Submitted: October 6, 2006
Rating: 1.5
bottom of plugs stay too dry.

Rapid rooters require you stay on the moisture levels in the plugs from beginning to end....



I find this much more reliable.... its automatic...

This thing is no touch for the 7 to 10 days that they are in the cloner....

at most I put some more water in the reservoir one time.... 15 seconds work

Way easier than rapid rooter plugs....


JMO...

I like it...

I like it...

An excellent Idea!
A passive low tech cloner with readily available inexpensive components, a KISS method if I ever saw one.
Ice cube trays for water bottles, well I'll be...who knew...not I.
I have been enlightened.

I was one of the OG mentors.... but have been laying low since OG closed down.... just so you know Ive been around the block more than once...

Click to expand...

We certainly like folks that have "been around the block" before and are willing to take the time to share their various experiences, observations and techniques with the rest of us.
Welcome to the forums here, I'm glad you've decided to come out and play once again.

IMB

Thanks for the welcome....

I had already 'invented' this idea.... kind of....

I used 1/2" pvc and rubber bands....


the problem was the bottom of the pvc.... I didnt have the plugs....

I tried stuffing paper towels in all the ends but it was a pain in the ass......

As soon as I saw the ice cube thing I recognized what it REALLY was immediately....

A world class plant cloner.....


rotflmfao....

I've been having alot of trouble with my bubble cloner lately...I keep getting stem rot on the hard to clone starins...I think I'll give this a try. Thanks a bunch.

Cheers,
SH

World Class Cloner?

World Class Cloner?

So, um, how do you get the clones out once they are ready to transplant, without doing any damage? Thanks.

hehehe
I saw this thread and went out and picked one of these up.
Not for a cloner mind you, I drink ALOT of bottled water.

How do you get them out???

As I have said I dont let them stay in there a long time to get lots of roots...

So I simply grab the stem and gently pull them out....

If they have roots they are transplanted...

If not they are replaced back in the cloner...

nice...it really don't get much easier then that....if i didn't own an ez cloner i'd go try it right away....i'll get around to trying this though since it's so simple and my 120 ez cloner takes up way to much space sometimes when i only need to take a few cuttings.

i wonder if adding an airstone wouldn't help out a little since it would keep the water moving and get more oxygen instead of being stagnant......it couldn't hurt anything if the "wick" system was sucking up oxygenated water....but i wonder if it would speed anything up a couple days?