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Cloning Failing? Tried Everything? Found the missing link?
- Thread starter Herborizer
- Start date
Bird of Hermes
Member
I've had near 100% success rates for years by cloning in mini hempy cups filled with perilite. I start with 12oz Styrofoam cups with a hole punched in them a inch or so from the bottom and place them in one of those short long clear storage totes. The tote acts as a tray to catch the excess water when you water the hempys and I usually use 2 trays and move them from one to the other after watering them to drain the trays more easily. No humidity dome, no heating mat, no additives or hormones just plain perlite and bottled water. I use the same mini hempy cups to start seeds in perlite seems to be a good substrate for plants to start in and cuts down on dampening off occurrences. For clones the tip rests just above the level of the drain hole and seedlings get buried a little over a inch.
just post them here then. i dont think anyone would care.
What is the safe free clorine range for cloning? It sure isn’t .5 ppm or 780 mv. My gut tells me it’s closer to .05 or roughly 500 mv but I can’t find a graph that reflects ORP ranges in the .05 range. There is so much misinformation in this forum. I’ve found one person on one other forum who said they dosed with UC Roots and got free clorine of .04 ppm.
Joint Lock
Active member
secret to cloning is using a lil nuets in the spray water . nuets that are high P , with a little kelp water . Ive found as long as i use those 2 things i get about 90% or higher success
plants can tolerate a wide range of free chlorine values.
you should see the grass around my moms pool when there is splash out.
one year she had a leak at the skimmer where it connects to the concrete pool shell... i discovered this leak when trenching a water line for a hose bib in the back yard.
tree and shrub roots literally followed the leak towards the pool shell and i had to cut them all out with a maddox.
generally speaking anything up to 10ppm can safely be tolerated for short periods of a few hours... maby up to 20ppm even.
for just cloning though, anywhere from .5ppm to 2 ppm should work just fine.
the only reason to go higher would be if you system were already contaminated with lots of algae.
when your hydro system can hold 1 or 2ppm free chlorine for several hours, you will know that you killed off most of the microbes. when you dose up to 1 or 2 ppm... and its gone after 30 min, you need to super chlorinate to basically wipe out the algea/bacteria.
here is the thing though, you can never really kill off a big colony of algea(not without insane amounts of chlorine like 1,000 ppm)... especially when there is lots of light and heat and nutrients. in the case of a huge bloom of algea with lots of algea biofilms, you will need to hold a high amount of free chlorine just to beat it back to a point where low levels of chlorine can persist.
in most cases a severly contaminated system with slimes and algea biofilms colonizing all of your shit... its better to just take it all apart and clean it all out and wash and scrub with soap and some concentrated bleach.
when you expose a biofilm to some 10ppm chlorine solution... basically the exposed surfaces in the film colonies get killed off and turn grey/white, but under the dead surface you still get living algae. whan that chlorine falls to 0 or a very small fraction of 1ppm, the algea underneath will just reemerge and recolonize.
hydro systems are full of nutrients and heat and open to the air . they will always recolonize with bacteria or algea... the free chlorine you maintain just keeps them from taking over and forming these colonies in the first place. you can also chill the water down... this makes them reproduce much more slowly, and you can also try and exclude light 100%. But imo, running some amount of chlorine is just way easier and cheaper.
btw, algea isnt even that bad for plants in a hydro culture.... it just hangs out on the roots fucking up the movement of oxygen and competing for nutrients i guess.
its actually the parasitic fungi and bacteria that feed on root tissue- these you want to keep in check as they can actually kill plants outright in shortish periods of time.
unlike big fat colonies of algae, almost all of these parasitic microbes are very sensitive to chlorine. pythium for example can be wiped out with like .25ppm free chlorine with like a 30 minute contact time.
its actually the parasitic fungi and bacteria that feed on root tissue- these you want to keep in check as they can actually kill plants outright in shortish periods of time.
unlike big fat colonies of algae, almost all of these parasitic microbes are very sensitive to chlorine. pythium for example can be wiped out with like .25ppm free chlorine with like a 30 minute contact time.
oh yea another thing you need to know about chlorination... if you ever run into that "pool water" smell, you probably need to super chlorinate up to 10ppm or combined chlorine x 10 or x 20 even.
that smell is elevated chloramines( mono bi and trichloramine depending on ph).
google "break point chlorination" and "chloramine breakthrough" or "chloramine breakpoint", to see what im talking about.
but basically adding an excess of free chlorine will kill off what ever is causing oxidant demand and destroy the chloramine species.
all that being said... if the smell does not bother you, you can just leave the chloramine there in solution. its a much less effective disinfectant though so you should keep your free chlorine levels up even if you are seeing 1ppm combined chlorine.
oh yea and be aware that some hydro nutrients have a small portion of ammonical nitrogen... like 1% of the total nitrogen as ammonia. this ammonia will react with free chlorine over time to form chloramines and hence the "pool smell", so leave it out of your nutrient profile if you are worried about chloramines.
that smell is elevated chloramines( mono bi and trichloramine depending on ph).
google "break point chlorination" and "chloramine breakthrough" or "chloramine breakpoint", to see what im talking about.
but basically adding an excess of free chlorine will kill off what ever is causing oxidant demand and destroy the chloramine species.
all that being said... if the smell does not bother you, you can just leave the chloramine there in solution. its a much less effective disinfectant though so you should keep your free chlorine levels up even if you are seeing 1ppm combined chlorine.
oh yea and be aware that some hydro nutrients have a small portion of ammonical nitrogen... like 1% of the total nitrogen as ammonia. this ammonia will react with free chlorine over time to form chloramines and hence the "pool smell", so leave it out of your nutrient profile if you are worried about chloramines.
oh yea... regarding ORP.
again its just a proxy value for free chlorine.
many things alter the ORP values such as aqueous iron.
also PH effects free chlorine and hence PH will effect the ORP readings.
and finally... .05ppm free chlorine is a very low value that an ORP sensor is going to have trouble monitoring in the first place.
again, there is a reason why many sensor manufacturers bundle orp sensors with a PH sensor and temperature sensor... changing the PH of your water will change the amount of free chlorine resulting from a given addition of bleach or calcium hypo.
Queequeg can you speak on bacteria that resists clorine? As I monitor the clorine in solution, as soon as it gets down to a critical level, 420 orp, which also happens to be safe range for naked plant roots, over night the ph spike, the swampy smell, the froth. This solution had seen 3 drops bleach per gallon 3 days prior. I’m currently running boiled water in the ez clone. If that fails I’ll try bottle water. Giving up after that
there are many bacteria that can resist chlorine disinfection... i forget what they are called, but there are bacteria that can hibernate as little dried out husks that are resistant to chlorine.
there are also bacteria that are MORE resistant to chlorination... but this just means you need a longer contact time for what ever log 99 value you need.
cryto is the famous bacteria( its actually a protozoa i think) that keeps killing people. its needs a very long contact time to get fully "killed", so you often see outbreaks of this microbe as chlorination facilites fail, or distribution systems or piping leaks or just looses chlorine due to very long hydraulic residence times.
what is the alkalinity of your boiled water?
PH is logarithmic... as you approach 0 alkalinity your PH can be swung wildly by small aditions of acid or base.
420 mV is insanely low for free chlorine monitoring, i doubt you are getting any sanitation value from such small additions. you need to go much higher.
if you dont believe me... take a healthy plant, any plant i guess(go get a tom seed pack or what ever is in season from a garden center) ... and simply spray its roots with a solution of 10mg/l free chlorine and watch if for a few days.
3 drops of bleach does not mean anything to me TBH, you need to measure the free chlorine. chlorine products come in many concentrations, and sodium hypochlorite solutions will degrade with time when exposed to light and heat... this is why bleach bottles are almost always opaque HDPE.
3 days in between application is also a very long stretch for a system thats clearly not sanitized in the first place.
you need to maintain a known free chlorine value for a few days at least imo.
also if you are agressivly aerating this solution, the free chlorine will dissipate even faster and you will need even more frequent additions of bleach or calcium hypo.
are you adding organics to your nutrient solution? humic acid or any shit like that?
there are also bacteria that are MORE resistant to chlorination... but this just means you need a longer contact time for what ever log 99 value you need.
cryto is the famous bacteria( its actually a protozoa i think) that keeps killing people. its needs a very long contact time to get fully "killed", so you often see outbreaks of this microbe as chlorination facilites fail, or distribution systems or piping leaks or just looses chlorine due to very long hydraulic residence times.
what is the alkalinity of your boiled water?
PH is logarithmic... as you approach 0 alkalinity your PH can be swung wildly by small aditions of acid or base.
420 mV is insanely low for free chlorine monitoring, i doubt you are getting any sanitation value from such small additions. you need to go much higher.
if you dont believe me... take a healthy plant, any plant i guess(go get a tom seed pack or what ever is in season from a garden center) ... and simply spray its roots with a solution of 10mg/l free chlorine and watch if for a few days.
3 drops of bleach does not mean anything to me TBH, you need to measure the free chlorine. chlorine products come in many concentrations, and sodium hypochlorite solutions will degrade with time when exposed to light and heat... this is why bleach bottles are almost always opaque HDPE.
3 days in between application is also a very long stretch for a system thats clearly not sanitized in the first place.
you need to maintain a known free chlorine value for a few days at least imo.
also if you are agressivly aerating this solution, the free chlorine will dissipate even faster and you will need even more frequent additions of bleach or calcium hypo.
are you adding organics to your nutrient solution? humic acid or any shit like that?
Plain water, ph down, and bleach. New pump, new manifold, cloner through a new dishwasher etc. if you do a quick search through these forums and others you’ll see that plants in hydro suffer above 450mv. That’s a fact. We’re not talking about plants in a medium. I’ve hit my plants in soil with 750 orp and they loved it. Different animal. 1 drop of bleach per gallon is a lot. Look at snypes threads he likes one drop per 2 gallons. I started in a highly chlorinated environment for hydro (650) watching the bleedoff knowing full well that when it approached that 420 level the plants will either root or the ez clone transforms into a dirty fish tank over night. I have never seen anything like it. If you look at the threads where ozone controllers are used the orp is set at 375ish. This is by far the most difficult thing I’ve dealt with growing
Cloning is easy as long as you do a few things
1 Healthy mom
2 Give lots of nutes days before cuts
3 BIG cuts root easier...
then its up to you how you want to clone, Me I just cut at 45, scrape stem, dip in powder add to areocloner. Cloner has some type of clonex or root hormone and water, runs 24/7 ph around 6, no idea the temp I guess warm lol doesn't matter as long as it's not real cold.
1 Healthy mom
2 Give lots of nutes days before cuts
3 BIG cuts root easier...
then its up to you how you want to clone, Me I just cut at 45, scrape stem, dip in powder add to areocloner. Cloner has some type of clonex or root hormone and water, runs 24/7 ph around 6, no idea the temp I guess warm lol doesn't matter as long as it's not real cold.
oh you are doing 3 drops per GALLON? yea that sounds like more than ive used in the past tbh.
i think 1 drop = 1/15th of a ml?
so you are approaching .25 ml per gallon of what? 12.5% solution?
(VERY) quick math yields... .03 grams bleach solution per 1mg/l ignoring the ph issue.
so 3 drops = 1/5th of a ml?
1.2(density of bleach 12.5%) * .2 = .24grams
.24grams/ .03 grams per 1 mg/l free chlorine...
so you should be around 8mg/l assuming flawless math( its not).
what are you saying though? you dose 3drops per gallon( which reads as 650mV) and then wait untill it falls to 420 mV to dose again?
what does a dirty fish tank look like? are you talking about algea? or cloudyness?
its entirely possible that you are actually killing the roots with chlorine i suppose, but it does not sound like it.
are you willing to get a reagent test kit to verify the accuracy of your ORP sensor? it would really be more usefull to see actual mg/L values- if for no other reason than to verify your orp sensor readings.
what are you doing there? looks like you were just cloning in rockwool plugs in a seed flat?
edit: mistakenly replied to old post thinking it was new. im dumb.
HerbChambers
Active member
Can someone check my math?
I picked up some hth pool shock. It’s 56.44% calcium hypochlorite.
I added 1 gram of pool shock to 1 gallon of water to make a stock solution.
Ultimately I would like to add the stock solution to 1 gallon of water to make a 2 PPM solution of calcium hypochlorite.
How many teaspoons of this stock solution must I add to a gallon of water to achieve 2 parts per million.
54.66% equals 546,600 ppm
1 gram pool shock @ 546,000 ppm
Added to 1 gallon water results in 144.39 ppm stock solution
My math tells me I would then need to add 52.43 grams or 10.635 teaspoons to a gallon to arrive at 2 ppm.
That seems like a lot more than being recommended in the thread.
Did I do the math right?
I picked up some hth pool shock. It’s 56.44% calcium hypochlorite.
I added 1 gram of pool shock to 1 gallon of water to make a stock solution.
Ultimately I would like to add the stock solution to 1 gallon of water to make a 2 PPM solution of calcium hypochlorite.
How many teaspoons of this stock solution must I add to a gallon of water to achieve 2 parts per million.
54.66% equals 546,600 ppm
1 gram pool shock @ 546,000 ppm
Added to 1 gallon water results in 144.39 ppm stock solution
My math tells me I would then need to add 52.43 grams or 10.635 teaspoons to a gallon to arrive at 2 ppm.
That seems like a lot more than being recommended in the thread.
Did I do the math right?
