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Cloning Failing? Tried Everything? Found the missing link?

mojave green

rockin in the free world
Veteran
picture.php
picture.php
Rw dipped in sub-culture b&m tea.
I get 100% off most strains.
 

queequeg152

Active member
Veteran
how long does a 1 gal container of this blend last?

1 gram calcium hypochlorite in tap water in a capped gallon jug. Is it based on exposure to air and the duration of the container being open?

Anyone know the science behind it?

:tiphat:

its an equilibrium reaction... mostly driven by ph. when you lower the ph more hypochlorous acid is held in solution with less elemental chlorine being lost to the atmosphere.

if you lower the ph of your solution it would last longer, but not forever. just use sodium hypochlorite though.
its already ph stabilized and if kept in dark relativly cool places it should last a very very long time.

i have like 3 books under my desk that go over this in extensive detail... if you are really interested i can photocopy a few sheets for you.
 
Cloning is not natural,



Really? So Mr deer or bear comes along and starts chowing down on a patch of
Gange or hell rabbits , they leave a mess ( lol) , you don't think any of those downed but still living stems on a lush humic surface could could sprout roots. I feel if it wasn't natural it wouldn't be a thing. Have you ever known someone with tamarisk trees aka salt cedar? This tree has the ability to regenerate rhizomes from the most beat up of looking chunks. Example a piece of firewood left behind and boom roots from dead chunks.

The cut wants to live, its part of the plan man!
 

Cadfael

Active member
Great idea. and great thread. I used to be on the edge of the tap water system, so had a bunch of friends on well water. They called me "The clone King." I had no idea why.

Moved to a place on a well. Been having a problem with cloning ever since.

Don't have shock laying around. Took out my Clorox (8%). Read the clorox website. trying 1/2 teaspoon (tsp) to 5 gallons. This is the recommended dosage for disinfecting water for drinking. Let stand 30 minutes for residence time. I can always increase the dosage. Will post findings when I have more info.

At the above rate, 1 gallon of 8% clorox would treat 6500 gallons of water.
Thanks

PS. On lighting: I found that T5's and T8's were too light intense. Had better results when I went back to good old T12's.
 
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queequeg152

Active member
Veteran
people on wells should be dosing chlorine imho. its quite trivial, just a 100 dollar pump coupled to the relay that drives your well pump.

peace of mind imo. shallow wells can become contaminated, old wells too, but its mostly old shitty plumbing allowing water infiltration during periods of no water pressure.
 

palmeezy

Member
Pool shock does work wonders for hydro. Improved my roots health in RDWC more than anything...and I tried just about everything fighting iron bacteria in my well water.

For me, the missing link with cloning turned out to be humidity. Fought slime in my aerocloner etc. before I had the water squared away, but still didn't have 100% success rate. Added a fogger and literally haven't lost a single clone, other than from neglect. For any strains that are giving me problems in rockwool, I also root successfully in plain ozone treated RO rotor. They need transplanted asap though. I don't use any gel now, seemed to have a % that would 'damp off'.

In an ideal scenario, i'll soak the cubes in a 5.5pH solution with some IBA&NAA. If I dont have time, i'll simply soak them in some of my (fairly week) recirculating veg solution, which has all of the goodies.

Bottom line, if you are growing and trying to clone outside of ideal growing conditions, that may well be your problem.
 
I had lots of problems with cloning too. For me there was no magic bullet. Mostly it came down to knowing how much to poke at them. Poke at them too much they die, ignore them too much they die. Had the same problem with seedlings when I first started, it just takes some trial and error.
 

40AmpstoFreedom

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Great idea. and great thread. I used to be on the edge of the tap water system, so had a bunch of friends on well water. They called me "The clone King." I had no idea why.

Moved to a place on a well. Been having a problem with cloning ever since.

Don't have shock laying around. Took out my Clorox (8%). Read the clorox website. trying 1/2 teaspoon (tsp) to 5 gallons. This is the recommended dosage for disinfecting water for drinking. Let stand 30 minutes for residence time. I can always increase the dosage. Will post findings when I have more info.

At the above rate, 1 gallon of 8% clorox would treat 6500 gallons of water.
Thanks

PS. On lighting: I found that T5's and T8's were too light intense. Had better results when I went back to good old T12's.


If your well smells like sulfur that is what is killing your clones and would also be screwing up your grow. I switched to my well I had in a backyard for two grows and that was my introduction to crop failures and not to fucking change anything if it isn't broke. Get the water tested it could be lots of other things as well.
 

cocktail frank

Ubiquitous
Mentor
ICMag Donor
Veteran
I struggled with cloning for years, from aero to rw to peat plugs o rapid rooters.
Everything mushed and died.

I found that using one product has changed the game for me. Nearly 100% success now.
I use a product by the Flying Skull called Z7. Its a 2 part enzyme product.
1st part is he enzymes, 2nd is Citric acid.
I use it @.5ml/gallon of each part every 3-4 days in the aerocloner and no more snot or mush!
I tried the sterile route, Heisenberg tea route and every other trick in the book.
This shit works for me and everybody with the same problems that I turned onto the product.
I haven't used any pool shock in forever , I even dumped my stock solution if it because I nverr need it anymore.
Shit, I go months in between cloner cleanings now , it's almost criminal.
Srsly tho, y'all know me, I'm no shill.
But this shit works to keep th nasties at bay.
 

ownzu77

New member
I got an orp meter because I was trying to get a repeatable process.... All the studies claim 780mv at 6ph (should be .5 ppm free chlorine) is all that's needed to not get pythium.

It obviously is true. Im confident I could have temps go as high as you want them and you'd never get soggy stems. Unfortunately non soggy stems without root bumps are useless to me.

Apparently the 780 mc reading is too strong for the little roots to form or continue growing. I took a clone that just started rooting in a cup of coco, has 2-5 mm roots, thick...white...gorgeous, and put it in the cloner with 780mv reading and all progress halted and the thick white roots started browning and what looked to be getting ate away...burned off etc.

The ppm of the water was 150, that's tap plus bleach to reach .5 ppm chlorone.

I decided to use physan 20 instead of keeping a 780mv orp reading. I emailed the producers of physan 20, told them how I was using it, they said 5ml per 15 gallons for use in a recirculating res. After 9 days no improvement.

Now im back to the orp Meter keeping it around 400-ish. This is roughly what I found when using the exact directions from the clear rez bottle. At 780 it smells STRONGLY of bleach when you open the rez, nose burning strong. At 400 you dont really smell it...

Im really starting to hate this machine. It worked so well the first 3 runs then took a dump. I built a new manifold and all new misters 3 days ago... Close to giving up

Sorry to Unearth a very old thread but i really need to know to answer to this! did your 400 Mv result in repeatable cloning? 780 mv gave me rock hard stems but no roots and what looked like serious chlorine phytoxicity. I see other members maintaining orp of roughly 400 through flower with ozone. Any of you guys have any cloning knowledge to lend with ORP management?

When you said that the dose of clear rez set you at 400 mv that got me really thinking. Hopeful to hear back
 

ownzu77

New member
I disagree with that statement. ORP is the more precise device, as it states the cleaning power of the water without being swayed by ph.
 

MJPassion

Observer
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Quick question...

When testing for chlorine, my strips show total & free chlorine.

Are these values addative or am I only concerned with one of those values?
 

queequeg152

Active member
Veteran
I disagree with that statement. ORP is the more precise device, as it states the cleaning power of the water without being swayed by ph.

ORP is notoriously difficult to measure reliably.

its usefull in that its a easy measurement to make in a given online process( as opposed to 5 min intervals with reagent titrators)... but it is infact effected by PH and temperature hence you often see 2,000 dollar ORP sensor packages that include a thermistor and a PH electrode.

there is a reason that they still use reagent based free chlorine auto titrator analyzers for disinfection monitoring in waste water treatment.
 

queequeg152

Active member
Veteran
Quick question...

When testing for chlorine, my strips show total & free chlorine.

Are these values addative or am I only concerned with one of those values?

you want to look at free chlorine only...

total chlorine is all species of chlorine both the active hypochlorous acid species and the hypochlorite AND the chlorine species you dont care about( unless you are talking about a swimming pool) like chloramines( di tri and mono).

basically free chlorine is JUST the active disinfectant residual.

combined chlorine is (usually) the chloramine species.

total chlorine is free chlorine + combiend chlorine.

sometimes people use total and combined chlorine interchangeably... so watch out for that i guess.

the reason why these test strips include combined chlorine or total chlorine is becasue in pools the presence of excessive chloramine species indicates lots of organics present.

when you have lots of chloramine you need to superchlorinte your pool by adding an excess of free chlorine to fully oxidize these organics and remove the chloramine.

chloramine species are also responsible for pool water chlorine stink, so there's that aesthetic aspect too... but chloramine is generally thought to be bad for you so it has to be removed from your pool.
 

ownzu77

New member
ORP is notoriously difficult to measure reliably.

its usefull in that its a easy measurement to make in a given online process( as opposed to 5 min intervals with reagent titrators)... but it is infact effected by PH and temperature hence you often see 2,000 dollar ORP sensor packages that include a thermistor and a PH electrode.

there is a reason that they still use reagent based free chlorine auto titrator analyzers for disinfection monitoring in waste water treatment.

I appreciate the response and obviously educated dialogue. I have to further disagree though. I find my ex tech orp meter a very useful and effecient tool for my uses. It requires no packets and self calibrates. Use in tandem with a reliable ph meter and I find this is the best way to roll. Look around the web and you'll see that CC recommends orp meter/controller with an ozone generator. This seems to be best practice, I'm hoping to baby step toward this by first using the orp with the free clorine. Not that this is best practice. Cheers!
 

queequeg152

Active member
Veteran
like i was saying, orp is really only useful in online processes where you are measuring constantly.

in your case i would say that ORP is probably not that bad of an idea TBH, as im guessing you are running your ozone in a PID control scheme and your volume is probably turning over very rapidly. especially if your sensors are not that expensive.

the problem with ORP is the sensor maintenance though, its really no different from PH sensors so i dont understand how you can claim its self calibrating...

there ARE special flow cells for ph and orp instruments that can self calibrate sensors on regular intervals... but mostly these sensors are either pipe saddle mounted or mounted on retrievable masts.

calibration is usually done in the field with good quality buffers, and maintiance( far less frequent) involves electrolyte refills, washing and maby reetching the glass membranes, replacment salt bridges etc.

auto titrator analyzers on the other hand can run for months and months just needing bottle exchanges. yea eventually you need to remove the cuvette and clean it out and check out the LED and detector, replace tubing etc, but these systems are so stupid simple they tend to run unattended for very long periods without any serious maintenance.

they are not cheap btw, very espensive. im not reccomending them for sanitizing your grow system.

in my opinion you dont need a full blast automated disinfection system... IMO you can just pump bleach at set intervals with a solenoid pump and achieve more than satisfactory results. dont get me wrong... i think your system is cool, just unnecessary.

periodic cleaning of your equipment and periodic dosing up to 2-10 mg/l around twice a day should keep algae at bay provided you are not outdoors or something with LOTS of sun and heat.
 

ownzu77

New member
Obviously your knowledge of this topic is way more in depth than me. Would love to ask you a few questions through PM
 

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