Clones ppm in DWC

Meast21

Well-Known Member
What ppm do you run when you have clones in DWC?? I take my cuttings and put the bottom 1.5 inches of the cutting directly into water with nutes.
 

bubba73

Well-Known Member
cuttings ? as in no roots as of yet ? when i take clones i use easy cloner till roots form and about 3 inchs long then to dwc .... use tap water till roots are established ... ppm should be no higer 300 ...
 

thenasty1

Well-Known Member
What ppm do you run when you have clones in DWC?? I take my cuttings and put the bottom 1.5 inches of the cutting directly into water with nutes.
i run 200ish ppm (or .4ish ec) in my spray cloners for cuttings and small rooted clones, i would think that should suffice for dwc as well
 

radrolley

Well-Known Member
Are you using tap water, RO or something else? If you're using tap, well, or spring water your ppms may be higher than normal. It also really depends on what you are using as a cloning solution. I use RO and keep mine to about 500. I've had it to about 800 and still had success. I use CloneX Clone Solution 1-0.6-1. I'm not sure if you can go this high with other solutions. When the plants establish roots, they will yellow fast if they don't have the nutrients. You really can get away with using tap water and no nutrients although I would add something once the roots establish.

Make sure you have a somewhat decent air stone and air pump. They are not that expensive. One of the most important things that is easily overlooked when cloning in hydro is you need to keep a lot of oxygen in that water. Air stones make a world of difference.
 

Meast21

Well-Known Member
Yeah I got my cuttings directly in the tap water with a big air stone. The tap water comes out of the faucet around 160ppm and the water with the cloning solution is about 650.
 

Meast21

Well-Known Member
Are you using tap water, RO or something else? If you're using tap, well, or spring water your ppms may be higher than normal. It also really depends on what you are using as a cloning solution. I use RO and keep mine to about 500. I've had it to about 800 and still had success. I use CloneX Clone Solution 1-0.6-1. I'm not sure if you can go this high with other solutions. When the plants establish roots, they will yellow fast if they don't have the nutrients. You really can get away with using tap water and no nutrients although I would add something once the roots establish.

Make sure you have a somewhat decent air stone and air pump. They are not that expensive. One of the most important things that is easily overlooked when cloning in hydro is you need to keep a lot of oxygen in that water. Air stones make a world of difference.
Does the bottom of you're cuttings sit directly in the water?? The bottom of my cuttings about 1.5 inches sit in water and above that is the neoprene fittings and above that is the clone itself.
 

Meast21

Well-Known Member
Dewey Mister. As u can see the water is up to the top and the bottom 1.5 inches of the cutting is sitting directly into the cloning solution with a ppm of 650. Water out of tap is about 150..

IMG-20180829-01466.jpg IMG-20180829-01465.jpg
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
I use a little DIY Rubbermaid tub to root cuttings pretty much the same as what you are doing there @Meast21.

I use RO water with about 150ppm nutes and a dash of peroxide. A little bit of all 3 parts of the nutes with a little extra Bloom. I've rooted cuttings in the DWC tub with over 1000ppm so I don't think it's a critical factor.

Cloner1701184.jpg

It was warm and I left them too long in there and some root rot developed but I put them in pots of soilless and they did fine.

Rooted08.jpg

:peace:
 

Meast21

Well-Known Member
I use a little DIY Rubbermaid tub to root cuttings pretty much the same as what you are doing there @Meast21.

I use RO water with about 150ppm nutes and a dash of peroxide. A little bit of all 3 parts of the nutes with a little extra Bloom. I've rooted cuttings in the DWC tub with over 1000ppm so I don't think it's a critical factor.

View attachment 4189457

It was warm and I left them too long in there and some root rot developed but I put them in pots of soilless and they did fine.

View attachment 4189459

:peace:
It looks like you're water is low?? The bottom of the cuttings aren't in the water?
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
It looks like you're water is low?? The bottom of the cuttings aren't in the water?
The ends are in the water when the lid is down but they probably don't need to be. The popping bubbles act like those ones that use spray heads and high pressure to blast the stems.

Looks like you don't cut the leaves of the clones either??
Don't really need too. I have a cake lid that is almost the perfect size to make a decent dome and I'll spray the inside of it to keep the humidity up to around 90%. They might droop a bit but soon stand up. More leaf is faster growth once they get some roots and get planted in a pot or tub for DWC and get under strong light. Can have 21 cuttings in there if need be.

ClonerWithDome.jpg

I numbered each puck with Roman numerals so I can keep track of who's who when doing multiple strains. I run my little soldering iron at lower voltage with my variac so it's just hot enough to melt the neoprene without vaporizing it.

ClonePlugs01.jpg

The pucks just sit on top of 3/4" holes I made with a wood drill then melted the edges smooth with an alcohol lamp. I first filled the lid with pucks then used a nail to poke thru the center of each and mark the spot to drill each hole. Had a sheet of 25 pucks so have 4 spares. Should last a long time tho.

ClonerTop.jpg


A 12" airstone is too long so I sawed one off with a hacksaw and sealed the end with 2 part epoxy glue. I've since moved the valve out of the tub so now have just one line to the stone. It would get in the way with a lot of cuttings in there plus it was bad design. Don't know what I was thinking. Must have been high. :)

AirlineConnect.jpg


Easy enough to make and pucks can be made out of those pool noodles if you can find thin ones. Could be square if you have to make some and they sit over holes like mine.

:peace:
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
My buddy in the city has mothers in one 8x4 tent and two 50 site DWC type cloners in a 2x2 to make clones for commercial growers and uses straight tap water. Been doing it for years like that.

A couple years ago I was fitting a screen on already grown plants and a small grow tip fell into a bucket of old tap water I kept in there to help keep the RH up. My dugout water that starts at 400ppm and pH 8 and I just added more as it went down for most of the winter. I left it sitting in there and was about to remove the bucket and dump out the water and thought I saw a root. Damned if it didn't sprout some. Water had to have been 1000ppm or higher by then and still pH8.

Put it in a pot of promix and it grew just fine. Almost anything works to make clones. :D

Bucketclone.JPG
 

Major Blazer

Well-Known Member
Tap water, silica at 1/4 strength, and the recommended amnt of regenaroot (on the bottle), pH'd to 5.5ish I didn't measure ec/ppm. I started with the stems just above water, letting the bubbles from the air stones give out a kind of aeroponic effect, but next time I'm fully submerging. 15/16 rooted. No cutting to leaves, no humidity dome - not needed in dwc cloning.clones.jpg
 
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