I like maynards process. that is a tried and true process. however these days I find no reason to deal with annoying Rockwool, hence the bubblers. The one thing I will disagree with is tough love. For me, consistently the clones that look the best and recieve the least amount of stress are the ones that grow the fastest and produce the most. Dont confuse this with whether the clone is large or small, in the end I have found it really makes no difference whatsoever.

I think you need to mention what strain you are trying to clone, because you might just be working with a bastard. Big Bud for instance is absolutely notorious for never cloning or having a horrible success rate. But if its an easily cloned strained...well something is godaweful wrong because you really should have a 99% success rate.

What I used to do (worked great) is different from what I do now (also works just as great). I used to be sterile, sometimes cut underwater, Clonex cloning gel, the works. Now? I snip with some scissors, 45 degree angle cut HAS NOT shown any advantage to a normal straight chop. I repeat that I have seen no difference over and over, its merely habit for me. Roots like to come from nodes and cutting at too much of a 45 degree angle can exposure to much of the center of the stem or create an area that dies and can lead to virus/mushy stems. Always include atleast one node below the surface near the bottom. It is also good to have a node right at the surface. So I snip a bunch, maybe 50-60 at a time. Each time I snip them, I strip them of lower leaves/branches and toss em in a bowl of water until Im done. Then I collar them with neoprene collars (nice and soft but secure) and drop them into the aerocloner or bubbler cloner. No Clonex dipping or rooting hormone. If I am in a hurry, I will use Root Accelerator (or Excelerator or something). Its a heart breaking $70 for a small bottle, but this stuff is the best in the entire business and it barely takes a teaspoon or 2. It will last for atleast a few hundred clones so its a small price. I never spray them. They look wilty for the first day and then perk right back up.

I use 5.5-5.8pH water, out of the tap. Water about 70-74 F. I leave the water about 1" from the bottom of the lowest clone stem with bubblers. More airstones means more bubbles. Some strains I grow root in under 1 week! In 2 weeks they have roots 6-7" long which is not good, to much shock. You want to plant RIGHT when the roots start to poke out, this has the best success rate (although Ive never personally had a plant fail because the roots were too long during transplantation). Some strains like Trainwreck take up to 2 weeks to root. But ive never come across one that didnt clone, although some had a 95% success rate instead of 99% or the typical 100%. This is not to make you feel bad, Ive been doing this for awhile and have a method down. Youll figure out whats wrong soon enough. I dont keep anything sterile and I change the water every 1-2 weeks. I get no algae or bacteria or anything but pearly white roots. This is just under a CFL or grabbing the side light from a metal halide.