I have some clones in a root riot tray. I cut them at 45° with a brand new scalpel, dipped them in Clonex, then inserted them into root riot plugs 2 weeks ago covered in the dome the comes with the kit, I have not watered them and the humidity dome is full of condensation as it should be. I also squeezed all the excess water from the plugs and they are barely moist before I put my clones in them. I trimmed all the leaves off except a few per clone and even then, they are trimmed back to almost nothing so they should be making roots, not sugars. The remaining leaves have a decent color but only 1 out of 18 have rooted. Today is day 15 and nothing has changed.
In the mean time I have popped many seeds and have those plants on their 3rd set of leaves while these clones sit doing nothing.
I gave up on root riot plugs and built an aerocloner. It works better for me, easier faster and cheaper.
Domes are necessary if your ambient air is dry. But I live in the humid Midwest, so have never needed them. I would try letting your plugs almost dry out. That seems to make the roots pop out when it is time.
That’s your main problem. Root Riots come pre-moistened with a sufficient moisture level.
When using Root Riot, open the bag and stick your clones. Don’t squeeze them dry, and don’t pre-moisten them. You could use a previously opened bag if you sealed it well after opening.
I have rooted thousands of 10" clones in Root Riots, at 1,000-2,000 clones each time I clone. I use the 1,500 cubes Root Riot mega pack (which comes in a trash bag inside a box). Following the irrigation directions below, I get >98% success at scale with first root nodes on day 2 or 3. I also foliar mist a few times per day starting on day 2 or 3 with a custom formulated complete nutrient profile based on commercial poinsettia cloning practices. The foliar spray @150 mg/L nitrogen with no phosphate or sulfate using amino acid (glycine) chelated micros. And I do other things that I won’t go into here that also assist in cloning success by leveraging chemistry and plant physiology.
Try this:
Double stack try inserts (to keep the bottom of the Root Riots off the bottom of the clone dome tray and provide extra support for the clones)
Double stack the dome tray (to increase the tray strength)
With a new bag (or using a well-resealed bag), stick your clones (do not pre-moisten or squeeze the Root Riots).
On day 4 or 5 depending on the room temp and light level (the clones’ callous should be formed by day 3 or 4), remove the tray inserts (with the clones in the tray insert).
Don’t be scared of giving them nutrients. Add nutrient solution 1/3 to 1/2 way up to the dome tray. You only want the bottom 1/3 to 1/2 of the cubes to be submerged. Use a complete nutrient profile at 75-100 mg/L nitrogen.
Place the tray inserts into the dome tray for 1-2 minutes
Remove the tray inserts
Empty the dome tray and rinse it well
Place the try inserts back into the dome tray
Place the dome back on the tray
After 2-3 days, or whenever the cubes start drying out, repeat the above process, but use a complete nutrient profile at 100-125 mg/L nitrogen
Continue rewetting the cubes when they begin drying out
While many people claim that’s what you should do, it’s incorrect logic. Don’t trim the leaves at all. Take clones with at least two leaf sets (one internode below the apical leaves). But it’s better to take clones with three leaf sets (two internodes below the apical leaves).
To acclimate your clones, you should begin removing the dome for a little while (5-10 minutes) a couple of times per day starting on day 4 or 5, increasing the time the dome is off each day. Your clone room should be >65% RH and 72-74’ F (because it gets hot inside a sealed dome). Keep your light at around 100-150 PPFD (measured at the clone height) for days 1-5, then 150-200 PPFD for days 6-10, then 200-250 PPFD after day 10. By day 10-12, you should be able to leave the dome off for hours with humidity above 65% and low light without issue.
Also, try using Dip-N-Gro instead of CloneX. Use the soft wood dilution rate with distilled water and dip for no longer than 3-5 seonds using a stop watch or cell phone timer.
May just be a hard to root strain. Given your stated conditions and things arent rotting out, I’d be thinking its the genetics. What’s your ambient temps and are you seeing callousing at all?
Edit:+1 on @Ralf trimming and Dip n Grow suggestions, plus if he’s seeing 98%+ on samples sizes @ 2000, that’s an sop worth following
Best advice I can give you is buy some eazy plugs ct66 and take the plugs out the tray they come with and put them in a deeper tray so it makes a micro climate under the plugs, don’t over soak them and don’t squeeze. Keep the dome on for 6 days, start wiping moisture off the dome at day 3 every day.
Then at day 6-7 Crack the vents, next day open vents wide open, then two days after that remove dome.
Guaranteed success, this is so good that @anon56994712 patented it as his own, #tomtek.
I used plugs for years with 90 percent plus success. You dont need the dome unless they wilt and put the dome on and then when they perc up take it back off. I use a flourescent shoplight a couple feet above. Like they said= gett an aerocloner. It saves money long term at 20 for a tray of plugs. And i always used to have to go to the hydro store for that one item
Root riot cubes
Don’t have to 45 deg cut, just cut with clean knife or scalpel
Use clonex or whatever rooting gel doesn’t matter
Plug the cubes with clones
Put in tray on heat pad at 78-80 degrees
I use straight well water at a 5.8-6.0 ph don’t need to flood tray just make sure all cubes got a shot of water. you don’t want a inch of water in the tray. Just enough so bottom of cubes are in water.
Throw dome on with both vents cracked about a half inch open and wait 7 days.
Been doing this for 10 years and has never failed to produce
Are you using a heat mat? I forgot to plug in my heat mat in and that happened… and I use your exact method/cloning gel
Also, I keep the dome on non-stop for about 4 or 5 days. After the 4 or 5 days, I take off the dome for a few minutes to air them out once a day
I personally remoisten them with tap, knowing theres at least some chlorine in it and squeeze out the excess water. You never know how old the bags are or how long the clones have stayed in that same moisture. 10" are tall as hell though, mine are about 7" and by the time i’m ready to pot them they’re already almost too tall for the dome
Just want to say, I have bad things to share about these plugs. After a year of investigation into why my crew and all associated growers were having a mystery issue making plants sick around week 3 of flower, I discovered bulb mites in the root zone. Very long story, drastically shortened, they came from root riot plugs.
Get them wet, wait 2 days. Rip one open, examine with loupe. What you’re looking for (Rhyzoglyphus robinii, not sure if I remember the spelling) is about 1/40th the size of an adult spider mite. They cannot be killed with cides or anything, except temp over 150F. So after hot washing all hydro equipment and going back to rw plugs everything bounced right back.
Maybe they got that issue solved, I don’t know. But I had brought this discovery and solution to so many ops since then… those plugs were pretty popular for a while there lol, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado, like 15 places I had ID’d them in. At the time it was considered a novel cannabis pest (it wasn’t) and hadn’t been thought it couldn’t effect yield/quality (it does, dramatically).
So the bulb mites I mentioned, they actually eat fungus and not the roots specifically, so maybe there’s a correlation there. The reason they damage the plants is the massive growth of “root hairs” that the plant throws out as flowering begins to take shape are similar size/shape to the hyphae of fungus that the mites eat, so they eat the root hairs too.
Just switched out to these plugs. Like em alot. Deeper plug, coco/Pete/coco-biochar/perlite. Big wins. I do need to just bite the bullet and build or buy an aerocloner. I just hate not being able to move my clones around
