Plant Cloning Bucket Kit

thingiverse

I wanted a cloning setup that would fit snugly in a standard five-gallon bucket but couldn't find exactly what I had in mind and the few things I did find were rather pricey. So here we are after a rainy weekend and some random thoughts... The design for the flange adapters is to accommodate the standard 1 1/2 Rockwool Grow Cubes, with holes drilled to a precise 2”. Included is a drilling template for both nine-site and fourteen-site builds. These can be printed on an eleven-by-seventeen piece of paper and cut to fit the bucket top. The fourteen-site build requires the use of 2 1/4” Rockwool Flanges, while the nine-site build can utilize either the 2 1/4” or 2 1/2” Flanges. For the hydration system, I didn't opt for a water pump due to its inherent inefficiencies when working on this scale. Instead, I chose to use air to create a bubbler. For my test unit, I'm using an extremely small air pump (originally from an old betta fish tank), which consumes only 1.2 watts and has shown promising results for a single bucket. (Updated: Once the rock wool blocks are loaded and watered from the top to fully saturate them, from then on, only the small pump is needed, with the bubbler maintaining saturation.) The bubbler consists of four pieces: base, bubbler, water regulator, and air inlet. I found that none of these pieces required gluing together as they fit well enough for my purposes. If you do need to glue them, make sure to attach the water regulator to the bubbler before connecting it to the base. Standard aquarium tubing with a 3/16” size is used. I decided not to build the bubbler with a water inlet hole since drilling one afterwards was quicker and easier for fit and finish. A 9/64 drill bit was used, although a 1/8” would be perfectly acceptable (I haven't replaced that size in my index yet). You'll want to drill it in a location where the water regulator will cover it once you have. There are holes on the base designed for using twenty-millimeter button-head suction cups, but rocks seem to work just fine.