BasikTekoftheWeek: Bubble Cloning

[smallarmsfire]

keep it simple.

just need a drill and a blade of sorts. punch some holes & make a few cuts in your $1 storage bin and you've got a cloner just waiting to be hooked up to an air pump.

cut your clones at an angle, scar them a touch and load them in. no need for cloning gel or powder... maybe just a root stim like bcuzz or superthrive in the water if you'd like.


clones don't need to look neat & tidy.. just go ahead and crowd them in. these fan leaves could have been trimmed down, to encourage rooting. but they don't have to be..



no need for foam plugs, or rockwool. these clones could eventually be loaded easily into soil, hydro, or aero systems.
just drill 1/4" holes in a pattern like this triangle, and make a cut with your blade on 2 sides of each to allow for easy removal of fully rooted clones in the future.

[smallarmsfire]

the white bumps show that the plant is getting ready to root.. once you see em you know you're getting close.




the only real key? keep the water temps between 70-78F, or 21-25C. you can risk going warmer to speed things up, but you also don't want to encourage algae on new clones or you may have to keep fighting it.

you'll see very slow results if the water is consistently below 70, and in most cases get no roots. the clone will simply stay in stasis, essentially.

[smallarmsfire]

anyone can clone, and it should not be looked at as an advanced grow technique.


they are essential for small grows at home, where plants benefit from being flowered very short to improve overall light saturation.

they will save you time & energy, and it's a great backup to have some dependable moms & clones running constantly while you experiment with all those new seeds.

[koshiva]

Nice...I have been meaning to give aero clonning a go for a while now since there have been some issues with soil born insects, or fungus, when useing perlite/vermiculite, or potting mix, or even rock wool. Aero just seems so easy and logical...no need for those expensive mediums either.

I suppose in a large tub in cooler area's a fish tank heater adjusted appropriately would be good. Or simply houseing ones areo clonning tub on a mothering box, or warm area would do...obviosuly with the appropriate lighting above clones.

One alternative approach I have seen is instead of useing a lid on a tub, one could use a thin sheet of styrofoam with holes in it which floats on the water. I guess because it floats, if the water level drops, so does the styrofoam meaning the clones always have their bases submerged.

I suppose also, one other benefit of aero is because of the water, humidity levels remain high meaning one doesn't need a humidity dome. Not that I have used humidity domes with conventional clonning...but do you recomend a humidity dome?

[smallarmsfire]

hey kosh,

never need the humidity dome! let your leaves starve themselves all they like, it'll just get ya roots quicker.
and with the styrofoam or any alternative to the lid-- just make sure you cut your holes in some way so that you'll be able to remove clones with minichunk rootballs, cause they sure won't want to come back up through those 1/4" holes.


in my case, i got tired of clones getting stuck in stasis in soil or rockwool, since it's winter here and maintaining ideal temps in either of those 2 mediums is far more tricky.

to keep water at the ideal temperature, you could also use an ordinary heating pad that you'd buy in a pharmacy or at Walmart, although most of them automatically shut off after an hour or so.
just keep the heating pad underneath the storage bin[s] and turn it on 5 times a day or so.. in the summer this might hardly be necessary.





lots of people who make actual aero-sprayers inside a larger cloning tub, find that the submerged pump that runs the sprayers heats the water perfectly into the mid70s. there are plans to build a large 60site aero cloner for around $50, rather than the $300 you'd pay at the hydro store.

[koshiva]

Heating pads I have found can be quite shite.

Is it me, or is that pic of the newly forming roots on that clone...-those nodules seem to be forming above the water layer? If that is so, it would suggest that the roots would form much quicker in an aero-clonning situation..ie even more air....mist as opposed to water with bubbles.

I think, regards the holes I would just tend to have larger holes and remove the clones as soon as they have some root growth...ie pot them up early. Once they have some roots they are away.

The aero clonners I assume consists of simply a summerged water pump in a resevoir bin filled water(heated)...and then on the end of the hose is placed a suitable nossel to create a 'mist' which fogs up the 'clonneing container'. If that is the case, I could see one major disadvantage of such as system, and that would be if the water pump failed, potencially the clones could dry out quickly....unless of course, in the clonning bin, any excess water returns to the resevoir, except for an inch or two which remains in case of pump failure...an inch or two of water would maintain humidity such that mositure levels would be ok for a number of hours or days if the pump failed...blah blah

Alternativly, where a pump failure happened due to mechanical fault...two pumps would be used.

If I did go with aero-clonning, instead of dipping clones in hormone, I would simply as you suggest, use a liquid based rooting hormone diluted in the water.

There is nothing worse than taking a number of clones and only getting 25%...that sucks. Aero here we come.

[smallarmsfire]

yes.. plants do not need to be submerged. most people will say that they do better when they are not subermerged, but instead held aloft in a fizzy, misty warm air above the bubbling water.

these ones here are underwater, when the lid isn't being lifted... much success is possible either way.

most important.. just get an airstone in the bottom so you have nice water misting going on.



people building the subpump aero cloners tend to use 1" PVC tubing fitted with spray nozzles, and the entire system is closed.

[Dandaweedman]

Aeroponics. The Universities use them for propagation more often than not.

[acarl1078lewis]

Great article SAF, thanks for sharing, I'll try this next round of clones!

[smallarmsfire]

bump.

[slunt]

Did you say bump?