ebb and flow question

about to put clones into an ebb and flow. I have 4 in rockwool cubes and plugs but my roots in my cloners are all tangeled and huge. I dont know if they will even fit into the cubes. My question is when i cut the roots of the cones to detangle them to put them in the rockwool will it kill them. My second question is since the rooting system is so huge how will i be able to fit them in the rockwool. Would it be possible to just fill the tray will hydrotron rocks and put them in there without the rockwool. I was planing on flooding tray 3 times a day for a half hour with the cubes if i did no cubes would I have to flood more times a day?

You can put the plants in clay pellets with no rockwool.

And if you used 4 inch cubes in a flood and drain and the cubes got wet 3 times a day you would have overwatering.

Your rockwool is supposed to be a 1/2 inch above flood level.

how many times a day should i flood the tray with no rockwool and just in the rocks and then im taking my clones out of a cloner but the roots are all tangled if i cut them all loose from eachother will they die?

Cutting the roots will cause some stress thats for sure.

It depends on how much cutting you have to do.

And you can flood many times with the hydroton pellets. Say one flood every 2 hours, 12 hours lights on = 6 floods.

Do one at lights on and one and hour before lights out.


More floods = more nutrients to the plants and more oxygen to the roots.

drextreme said:

I have 4 in rockwool cubes and plugs but my roots in my cloners are all tangeled and huge.

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Dude! You should be very happy. Big tangled roots on cuttings is a good place to be. Many seem to have problems getting to this point.
Crack open the champagne!

drextreme said:

I dont know if they will even fit into the cubes.

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Your instinct is correct. Stuffing that big root system in to a small cube would set your plants back some. You want to have the roots be not all smashed up. Maybe you could break up the rockwool so the roots are properly spread out. Myself I would use loose coco and pack it around the roots, maybe you could use loose rockwool.

drextreme said:

My question is when i cut the roots of the cones to detangle them to put them in the rockwool will it kill them. My second question is since the rooting system is so huge how will i be able to fit them in the rockwool. Would it be possible to just fill the tray will hydrotron rocks and put them in there without the rockwool. I was planing on flooding tray 3 times a day for a half hour with the cubes if i did no cubes would I have to flood more times a day?

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Yes hydron would work well with 3 times a day and the big roots you have. Once again your instinct is correct, go with it.

drextreme said:

how many times a day should i flood the tray with no rockwool and just in the rocks and then im taking my clones out of a cloner but the roots are all tangled if i cut them all loose from eachother will they die?

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As to how many times a day you flood the table. The answer is not some hard number like 3 for 30. Although if you want some hard number I would use 1 for 15. If you have grown in soil you know that it is important for the soil to dry out some. Coco and Rockwool are good because they hold a lot of water and if your pump breaks you have time to manually water and go to the store to buy a new pump. The hydron rocks dry out almost immediatly so you can not over water. If you inspect your rooting medium it should get sort of dry. Big plants will dry the medium fast, also hot lights will dry the medium. In coco 1 time a day for seedlings is way to much because they get root rot. The same schedule is a bit dry for big plants. The thing is you can over water for a few days and its ok. So monitor them and cut back enough for them to dry some.

You could use hydron and coco if you wanted to flood less often but still have something easy to spread those big roots in.
good luck.