plant growing slow! why??

i started my sprouts in soil 23 days ago and they seem to b alot smaller than they should, this is my first grow but my grow room is a pretty big basement with 2 185amp flourescent lights about 6 inches above, and a small ocelating fan blowing over them. its 60-68 degrees with light on and off. no nutes used but soil has slow release nitrogen.


top view

this is the biggest one of the bunch, the rest are about 2 inches shorter and hav less leaves

but any advice on why they are so small or how to make em grow faster would b great

I've been having the same problem with mine sept mine aren't as small, but how many hours of light are you giving them cause that could be the problem... or it could be just bad genetics.. what type of seed is it?

there lemon haze. i got them from a caregiver friend, its a pretty good strain. but i started them off on 16 on but they were growing really slow so i switchem to 24 on and they sped up quite a bit

23 days? i know nothing about fluros but id say you need more light.

yea thats wut i wus thinking, im adding 2 more 185 amp flourescents in about an hour
and jw but some one told me when doing 24 hour light i should turn them off for 2-4 hours every couple days?? is that true?

i heard that will put them in flowering after a couple times of turning them off

can u tell me what cfls your using , and how many watts they are.

it would be in your best interest to get rid of that slow release fertilizer crap and go buy some seedling soil from local hardware/garden store. i had the exact some problem u did on my first grow, i had the same soil and was watering to much.

im not sure what cfl means but do u mean like F17? there 17 watts im not sure what the 2 lights iv been using the whole time are tho, i got them at a garage sale all i kno is there F17 flourescent tubes

cfl just means compressed fluroscent lamp. how many watts are your lights?

and what kelvins are they , it will say on the light for example : 2700k or 6500k

i have 4, 17 watt 24 inch tubes. i just added the 2 tubes about 2 hours ago and they seem to b loving it.
each bulb puts off 1325 lumens and i hav alouminum foil reflecting all wasted light onto the plants

and there 4100 kelvin

is it cold there?

yea kinda its 63-73ish degrees

I've never grown with tube fluorescents, just cfl, but still you can practically touch the plants right up to the lights and it will be hard to burn them. Get them as close as possible to the light. At least within 2 inches, otherwise the light is dissapaites too much and lumens go unused. I would recommend getting a couple cfls from 1000bulbs.com. Very cheap, very effective. Even if just as supplemental lighting, get a few low watt 5000K-7000K's for a few bucks each.And if you are using 4100K light for flowering, it won't do you much. Needs to be 2700K to productively. Even when I switched over from 24 hour light with my 6500K's, they didn't start to flower till I switched the light to a 2700K. Hope this helps and not just bores you

yea im planning on buying better lights for flowering when they get mature enough,thanks for the advice . but is the 4 tubes i have enough to get them through vegging?

tactownryder said:

i heard that will put them in flowering after a couple times of turning them off

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it wont, putting them under extended lights eg 12/12 will. fooking with the light cycle might stress em tho so keep it 24 till they have grown a bit then summut like 19/5 till ready to flower, then 12/12.

if my plants got stressed out from adding more light or heating the room temp up, could it make the leaves dry and have yellow dots and dark purple/black bloches?? 2 of my plants got really unhealthy looking right after i doubled the light and brought room temp up from 55-65 to 70-75

i just took these pics a sec ago, the camera is really ghetto, the color is off, the spots are darker purple/brown then they look in pics

any advice is very helpful and apreciated