Hey guys, I'm a first time grower and member here and i'm looking for some advice. I bought 40 clones from a friend of mine and picked them up from out of town. I placed them under my 2 42' F5 florescent lights and keep the humidity dome on them all the time. I have a nice small square room that is covered in Mylar that will eventually be my veg room. I've been using bottled water to mist the clones about ever 2-4 hours as my friend reccomended. I've had them for 1 week and many leaves are starting to turn yellow. I investigated and they do not have good root systems at all yet. Just went to the store today and bought a temp and humidity gauge, along with some PH strips, and a root growing enhancer called RapidStart Rooting Enhancer. I tested the PH (without the RapidStart as I haven't used it yet) and the PH of my water seems to be at 7-8 ish. I am not sure what I should do about getting my plants back to healthy conditions at this point... The PH is a little high but I am not sure how to go about lowering it or raising it slightly, I have some PH up and PH down solutions but I am not sure if they are meant for clones so I want to be careful. The temp is around 70-75, the humidity seems to be reading at around 55%. I've attached some pictures of the room and plants... Please give me some insight on what I need to do to get these babies back on track!! PICS: http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums/hh529/WeeeZ420/814126ed.jpg http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums/hh529/WeeeZ420/921dd1c6.jpg http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums/hh529/WeeeZ420/b53b6c4d.jpg http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums/hh529/WeeeZ420/7bea049e.jpg http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums/hh529/WeeeZ420/1a4662fc.jpg http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums/hh529/WeeeZ420/217bf549.jpg http://i1250.photobucket.com/albums/hh529/WeeeZ420/482848e3.jpg
Are you just feeding them straight water? You only need to mist the clones when you first put them in the dome for the first time, then don't open the dome up for 2-3 days. The humidity will stay inside the dome if the vents are all closed. After a few days then you can water them if the plugs are looking dry. You don't want to over water. That may be what is wrong with yours. Over watering and too much humidity killing the clones and causing them to become susceptible to fungal infection. Put your clones back into the dome and don't water them again until they start to look dry. Then water them but don't mist them and open the vents slightly or prop the dome up a little if it gets too humid inside. You should adjust the pH of the water to at least 5.8, but I go down to 5.6 and have better results with my clones. Then add some type of rooting specific nutrient in the amount they recommend to your water. I use Start at 60/ml per 5 gallons of water.
Yeah i'm feeding them straight water. I was told (and this book says) to mist them several times a day as they don't have roots to bring them water yet. I guess i'll try not watering them for a day or two and see if over watering is the problem... You said to close the vents to keep the humidity in, and then that there is too much humidity, should I keep them opened or closed then for the next few days? I will make a better water solution with lower PH in the mean time also, do you reccomend me using the RapidStart root enhancer in the next watering then?
Were they using a humidity dome in the book when they were suggesting they get misted that often? If you didn't have the dome on them then you would need to mist them every few hours or they would wilt very quickly, but when you have a humidity dome you don't have to mist them like that because the dome keeps them in a high humidity environment. Its really hard to say whether you should let them dry out a bit or keep them nice and humid for awhile longer. You should let cubes get to the point they are almost dry, but still not wet to the touch, then water them with pH adjusted water and your RapidStart root enhancer. Be sure that when you are done watering them that there isn't any extra water in the tray under the insert. When you clones start to root then you can leave about half a centimeter of water in the bottom to help with root growth and the clones will dry out faster so the extra water is wicked up into the cubes. After the first watering with the pH adjusted water and root enhancer then put the dome on and close the vents and let it sit there for a couple of days and see if they get better. Your clones also look really small and spindly so it might just be that they weren't healthy enough to survive in the first place, but I doubt it because I've had thin stemmed stuff root too. Edit: After you water them let them sit out in the open air for a few minutes then mist the inside of the dome instead of the clones themselves, this helps cut down on fungal growth. Here's one of my clones. The root growth at the bottom is what leaving a little bit of water in the tray later will help promote.