DIY Aero Cloner the EZ-Cloner Replica in 10 Easy Steps!

[ArcticBlast]

hey thanks for the cleaning instructions morpheen

question: do any of you guys use an aquarium heater in your systems? i gave mine a test run last night, and i checked this morning when i woke up, the water was cold

thanks!
ArcticBlast

 

[t33to]

hey thanks for the cleaning instructions morpheen

question: do any of you guys use an aquarium heater in your systems? i gave mine a test run last night, and i checked this morning when i woke up, the water was cold

thanks!
ArcticBlast

I use a 200 watt water heater. It's a bit over kill for my setup. Heats the water to 68 from 40 in about 1 hour lol.

 

[ArcticBlast]

ok thanks man!

i keep seeing people mention on this thread about keeping their pump on a timer because it gets the water too hot, i thought i messed up somehow lol

i just put a 10-15gallon heater in there, we'll see how fast it warms up

ArcticBlast

 

[Casual]

Morpheen, thanks for the link to the timer... If the fan setup doesn't work, i'll be going that route. I looked and looked for one that did 15on/15off with no luck, so went and did my fan deal. I have a 14" piece of 2" PVC through the lid of the cloner with a 2" fan mounted on the end of it pulling air through the rez, and an 10" intake pipe on the opposite, diagonal corner from it. The height was to keep the spray from flying out/around. In hindsight, I probably should have set the fan up to blow into the rez instead of pulling air through it, as I'm thinking I may wind up pulling some of the mist out. I'm keeping a close eye on it now.
I'm figuring with the misters going, by pulling air through the system, it'll cool that water down. I notice when I open the lid, the air is very warm.
Maybe I'm just spinning my wheels, but I figure I'll know one way or the other tomorrow. If the temps don't come down under 80f by tomorrow morning, I'll call the hydro shop and see if they carry those. If they don't, I'll order online.
I'm seeing a few tiny white dots on some of the clones, but no 'roots' yet. Rez has been running about 83, which is about 5 degrees over where I want it. Straight tap water, no anything. If I go to the hydro shop for the timer, I'll pick up a bottle of Olivia's cloning solution, as I saw it there last time I was in.

T33to... A full blown Water Heater?? Holy Crapola Batman!!

Caz

 

[Morpheen]

No problem Casual...

Have any pics of your cooling system (AKA Ghetto Rig ) sounds cool. I just ordered my 1min on/4min off timer (C.A.P. NFT-1E). I overslept and missed an auction for a used one for $50shipped. So I just ordered from the place I linked you ($60 shipped).
Tomorrow morning I'm going in for my surgery, when I get released I'll finally be able to set everything up. I'm planning to do a re-cap, through post from the assembly to roots. However, I don't currently grow MJ so I'll be using a special Chinese Elm pheno I have (seiju "frosty"). An excellent species/variety for Bonsai (my other growing hobby)

The cuttings will be a semi-hardwood, which is harder to root than MJ...So I'll be putting these Aero Cloners to the test!!

Keep it Growing!!

Dutch

 

[Casual]

Well HOLY SHIT! I just went and checked the rez... 57f... DAMN! That setup dropped the temp in the rez from 83 to 57 in a few hours. I'm shocked it worked that well... Much too well. I'm going to leave it off now and let the rez come back up to 80+ for tonight, then in the morning will start messing around with restricting the intake so it only pull a little bit of air through it. I may have to put something like this in the rez for my buckets. Hell of a lot cheaper than a chiller!

I'll take pics and post them tomorrow.

Caz

 

[Pipedream]

Casual - I'm curious about your fan system. That sounds like one hell of a temp drop from just evaporative cooling. Especially when you consider the fact that Swamp Coolers don't work in a humid environment, and that's just what exists inside our cloner tubs. What are the ambient temps in the room where your cloner resides and how are you measuring your temps? Can't wait to see some pictures and hear more details. PD

 

[D-9]

Aero cloner

Aero cloner

well i made a sweet Aero system this one cost me around 40-50$ and works very well. at first i used 1 single tube with 6 sprayers but quickly changed it to a "H" it had 6 heads now it has 14. its a rubber maid bid with weather stripping to keep the water in along with some clamps. i am using 2in. neoprene inserts i got 9 cut with room for 6 more. if i wanted i could get a couple covers and have 1 cover with 4 4in. net pots and veg/flower in the same system. or i could put like 40-50 1in. plugs for cloning. the EZ Cloner that is about the same size is around 300+ buck's the price is outrageous.

 

[Casual]

Ok folks, as promised, here are pics of my cloner and cooling setup.

The cooling is very simple. It's just a 2" 12V fan glued/siliconed to a PVC adapter, which is glued onto the 2" pipe. On the opposite corner is another PVC pipe which acts as an intake.
All it does is pull in room temp air (~72f), pulls it through the mist generated by the misters, and then up the pipe with the fan on it.
I honestly half expected the fan to pull water vapor out, possibly shorting the fan, but after a few hours of running, it was still completely dry. I did turn the output of the Power Supply down to about 8V, basically as low as it would go.
I have a Ratek Infrared temp gun to monitor rez temps... just shut down the waterpump, open the lid and shoot it in there. It was reading 83f yesterday before I turned the fan on the first time... 3 hours later, it was at 57f. After turning the fan off, and letting it run all night, it's sitting right at 74.5f, which I'm thrilled with. My best guess at this point is that simply venting the hot air out was enough to drop the temps several degrees.
So the air intake and exhaust pipes in the lid are now static and the fan does NOT run. I'll continue to monitor for a few days.
One other thing I wanted to mention... This is the misting manifold I built for my original attempt in a tote, which was much taller. I'm currently building a new manifold with will drop the misters about 4" lower than these, as they're much too high right now.

The cooler has a few stains on it... it's in fact VERY clean. I scrubbed the hell out of it with bleach before using it.

Any questions, please feel free to ask.

Caz

 

[Pipedream]

Casu - Nicely done !

 

[Casual]

Well folks, I'm on day 10... still no roots. Water temp has been bouncing between 75-80f.
I tried a cloning hormone the guy at the Local shop recommended, but all it seemed to do was cloud up the water a bit and encourage some slime to grow. I checked the PH/EC/PPM of the water this morning... PPM was 800, EC was 1.5, PH... who the hell knows... meter was bouncing all over the place, from 6.4 to 8.8.
I decided to dump the rez, cleaned it out, refilled, PH'd to 5.5 and continue with NOTHING in the water.
The girls all seem to be doing fine... they look nice and healthy, just no roots.
I'd like to hear any comments/suggestions/criticisms you may have...
Just trying to LEARN!

Thanks

Caz

 

[SumDumGuy]

Well folks, I'm on day 10... still no roots. Water temp has been bouncing between 75-80f.
I tried a cloning hormone the guy at the Local shop recommended, but all it seemed to do was cloud up the water a bit and encourage some slime to grow. I checked the PH/EC/PPM of the water this morning... PPM was 800, EC was 1.5, PH... who the hell knows... meter was bouncing all over the place, from 6.4 to 8.8.
I decided to dump the rez, cleaned it out, refilled, PH'd to 5.5 and continue with NOTHING in the water.
The girls all seem to be doing fine... they look nice and healthy, just no roots.
I'd like to hear any comments/suggestions/criticisms you may have...
Just trying to LEARN!

Thanks

Caz

Hi Casual,
I was admiring your cloner there. I'm sorry to hear you are not getting roots yet. I hear most people get best results when using plain H2o. Also What distance are the misters from the bottom of the lid? From the picture they seem very close and I can only assume you're bating the stem as opposed to misting - I could be wrong. Just wanted to see if I may suggest something that may benefit you.

 

[Casual]

Hi Sum... The misters are 4" down, they were actually closer to the lid in the pics I posted. I built a new manifold and made it as short as I could, but 4" is the best I can do.
The cooler is just too damn short. I can pull some more clones, and will drop them into Oasis cubes until I can build yet another cloner. I think the Aerocloner IS the better setup, I just need to build a taller one. Next go around, I'll also pick up one of the 1min On/4min Off timers... I'm thinking having the stems saturated 24/7 is prolonging the rooting. I'm using just plain H2O now. PH'd down to 5.8 or so now. Temp is hovering at 79f.

Here's another question... Several of the clones are very limp, I'm figuring they're done for. Several others looks great, just don't have roots... Can I take the healthy looking ones and dip them in some Cloning Gel and drop them into Oasis cubes, or are they doomed as well?
I wondered if maybe slicing off 1/4" of so of the stems from the nice looking ones before dipping in Gel would make any difference???
Please keep the advice coming...

The new 20"x36" tent showed up today... I'll get it built tomorrow and things transferred over from this crappy cabinet. It'll be a little tighter in there, but at least it'll be light proof now!

Caz

 

[rambam]

transplanting to larger collar

transplanting to larger collar

Is it possible to clone using 1" or 2" inserts as I've seen throughout this thread, and then once you have roots transfer the clones to larger 3" inserts for placement into larger Aero Veg/Flower system?

If the bottoms are cut completely out of the 3" netpots and root damage can be avoided, is there another problem I'm not foreseeing, such as roots growing into the neoprene that would be damaged?

 

[Morpheen]

Is it possible to clone using 1" or 2" inserts as I've seen throughout this thread, and then once you have roots transfer the clones to larger 3" inserts for placement into larger Aero Veg/Flower system?

If the bottoms are cut completely out of the 3" netpots and root damage can be avoided, is there another problem I'm not foreseeing, such as roots growing into the neoprene that would be damaged?

Thats very possible or practical even, roots don't tend to penetrate the neoprene inserts like they do to rockwool, root-riot plugs, ect. which is why they are re-usable...
As long as your gentile and careful while swapping the inserts they'll be fine...

Although, I'm not sure why people are still using the altered netpots for their aerocloners...
As long as the correct size hole is drilled into the lid (1/4" smaller than the outside diameter of the collar) the neoprene inserts fit nice and snug, there is no need for the additional support of the netpots, until/unless theres additional weight (I.E. Vegging/Flowering plant)...

Dutch

 

[EastBayGrower]

Thank you for this thread!!!!!

it has saved me alot of time and hassle in cloning and has actually turned me on to AERO which in my opinion is the way of the future, just wait and see...

 

[kp^]

Thanks again for this simple yet effective cloning solution!

Here's my recent cloner... clones are @ 13days in cloner running 24/7. Added some olivia's cloning solution, and ph is ~6.0.

EC .8

 

[THINKING GREEN]

when I lift the top of the cloner, I look at the stems and they always have water dripping off of them. Is that normal? Or are they getting too much water?

 

[DenseBuds]

when I lift the top of the cloner, I look at the stems and they always have water dripping off of them. Is that normal? Or are they getting too much water?

I'm assuming you've got your pump going 24/7? If so, I would expect water on the stems every time you look at them. This has worked just fine for me and others in the past. Some people will suggest you get a timer that does like 1min-on/4min-off. I'm going to switch to that next time to try to keep the temps down.

-DB

 

[THINKING GREEN]

I'm assuming you've got your pump going 24/7? If so, I would expect water on the stems every time you look at them. This has worked just fine for me and others in the past. Some people will suggest you get a timer that does like 1min-on/4min-off. I'm going to switch to that next time to try to keep the temps down.

-DB

Thanks for the advise. Where do you find a timer that does one minute on and four off? I can't find one anywhere. Thanks bro.