I've been cloning successfully for years and am so stumped I don't know what to do. I've been cloning in grodan cubes and then transplanting into 3 inch pots of a coco perlite mix i make. 3/1 ratio, expanded brick coco. Recently, the clones will wilt over and die in the 3 inch pots after they've been transplanted (with plenty of roots popping out of the grodan). The ones that live do the SAME thing a week or so after transplanting into a larger pot of coco. When i look at the root systems of the dead clones in the larger plants, they look like they never expanded out from where they were when they were transplanted from the 3 inch pot. I have always fed my clones an organic nutrient mix with EWC tea I brew twice a week. It's age old organics. The only thing I think i've noticed is that the coco seems to stay saturated and not drain off the way I remember it doing so... So i've switched to a new coco blend that's premade, and i've ditched the organic nutrients and switched to the AN SensiGrow i use for my hydro mothers. Anyone have any input or experienced something like this?
yep bro ditch the coco and start using clay pebbles!!! i had the same problem except it turned out to be fungus knat larvae were eating my roots. i used to use a good coco made by bio bizz i tried black gold just coir. its dark black almost in color. the clones all loked sad and droopy, seedlings were dying, everything was messed up and i couldnt figure out why. it turns out some manufactures dont use neem drenching when processing their media. also, they arent adding micoz......id say switch to pebbles and leave coco worruies behind....this coming from a coco fan who has 6 of the large bags of coco in his garage. leave the coco growing for outdoors.......thats my 2 bits. hydro all the way!
Hempy Bucket style grows with Perlite and COCO are the only way I've ever seen and used to match the results of DWC, which IMHO is the best way to grow indoors for yield and potency. I must say I doubt that gnat larvae could survive the compression process for the compacted coco bricks, or how much I flush the coco during rehydration. I've now switched to a mix of coco I get from the company we use at the commercial grow i work at that contains coco coir, perlite, pumice, rice hulls, expanded shale, humus, biochar, metamorphosed evaporite, oyster shell, azomite, yucca extract, and mycorrhizae. I'll see if this new coco makes a difference. Coco has always been the champion for clones in my experience, i'd hate to ditch it.
Well unfortunately I've ruled it must have been the nutrients. I switched from Age Old Grow (organics) to AN SensiGrow A+B and no further issue. I find this so odd, as I've used the organics for as long as i've done clones. I wonder if it was a bad bottle?
I have no hands on experience with hydroponics, but I think you might've answered your own question using a regular scientific method. You know what you could do, is if you had some extra clones, go through an experiment! Take 3 clones and plant. One clone with the tea, one clone with the sensi grow, and one control with no added nutrients (which yeah will probably die) See what happens! If nothing does, then maybe you can rule out the nutrients and move on to growing medium. Test with the coco, clay pebbles, and something else. See what sort of results ya get! Of course, this is assuming you've got some clones to spare for the sake of Science.
So I took my Age Old Grow back to the shop as it smelled odd to me. The owner said he thought it smelled funky, we opened a new bottle and it smelled way different. He swapped my bottles. I cant lose all my clones again so the majority will keep being fed synthetic nutes. I took 2 clones and labeled them for organic testing and fed them yesterday, so I'll see what happens to them in the next few days