slow growth in early flower(First Grow)

Hello,

I'm having some problems with my autoflower 6 weeks old (maybe not as I'm too newbie to judge)
I think since I saw the first signs of flowering was 2 weeks ago growth slowed down "in my opinion" as white hair not developing fast as I imagined. Also, can you identify any light stress signs from looks? Or am I too worried? I read online that I can put down my light cycle if the light is not dimmable. this is my 100W light (https://spiderfarmer.eu/products/sf1000d-100w-led-grow-light/)
now my light cycle is 16-8 instead of 18-6!

I'm wondering when I can see buds! As it's written on their website (https://2fast4buds.com/de/seeds/gorilla-cookies-auto) harvesting in 10 weeks
today is the end of week 6 (2nd week of flowering)

My guess is your light cycle isn't at the flowering stage. I think you can flower at 14/10 but it's probably best to flower at 12/12.

He has autos, they flower on 24 hour cycle aswell.
First give them at least 18/6 hours of light, after that lower your light, they are slow because your light is too weak to begin with and too weak at that distance.
Raise your temps to around 27-29c at least, match the RH aswell at around 50-60
They also look overfed, back off the nutes.

@DanKiller overfed? In the earlier weeks I gave 1/4th and by 3rd week started 1/2 dosage till week 4 as mentioned on my nutes official page. I was thinking of giving full nutes again this week like last week since I just started full dosage of bloom in the first week of flowering then 2nd week (1/4 micro full grow and bloom) and I guess it needs tons of P-K now from advanced nutrients

100w is under powered imo. I know they say that will flower a 2x2 but it's not ideal. Lower it.

2x2x4 to be specific. I did tons of lst and broke a branch on the way! It was a long journey as a first-time grower! Also, I'm afraid it's too bright rather than not enough because the light is not dimmable and the hight is limited. I put too much effort in LST to stay around to keep it around 41-42cm and the light is almost 18-19inch away

The light power maybe be low but I got good results on a 100W LED Spiderfarmer FS1000 on a 25L pot.
I would say an average 200g per plant in a 60x60x170cm.
You need to start somewhere

My problem is 120cm height, the plant is 41-42cm not including the pot, and the light is not dimmable, what do you think is a better investment? a better dimmable light or a longer tent?

Minbebistillmax said:

The light power maybe be low but I got good results on a 100W LED Spiderfarmer FS1000 on a 25L pot.
I would say an average 200g per plant in a 60x60x170cm.
You need to start somewhere

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Your grow looks really healthy. Great job for your first run mate. But it looks to me like you are at the very beginning of flower. I would call this week 1 and expect another 9 weeks before you harvest. What you saw a couple of weeks ago her showing sex not flowering.

Put her back on 18/6 and drop your light down a couple of inches every day until it's about 10-12 inches off the canopy. And keep doing what you are doing.

Mark a day on your calender at 9.5 weeks from now and don't chop her until then. Chopping 3 weeks early is the most common mistake made with newbies who are running autos. You have a large auto and that's why she's gonna go about 15-16 weeks seed to harvest. Breeder times don't mean f all.

Kola_Kreator said:

Your grow looks really healthy. Great job for your first run mate. But it looks to me like you are at the very beginning of flower. I would call this week 1 and expect another 9 weeks before you harvest. What you saw a couple of weeks ago her showing sex not flowering.

Put her back on 18/6 and drop your light down a couple of inches every day until it's about 10-12 inches off the canopy. And keep doing what you are doing.

Mark a day on your calender at 9.5 weeks from now and don't chop her until then. Chopping 3 weeks early is the most common mistake made with newbies who are running autos. You have a large auto and that's why she's gonna go about 15-16 weeks seed to harvest. Breeder times don't mean f all.

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thanks a lot for the advice. Almost 10 days ago my plant was around 17-16 inches away from the light and it looked like shying away from it, also edges of some leaves started to flip downwards which was kind of a light stress sign to me. Thats why I hooked the light up as much as I could and now it’s around 18-19 inches and I keep pushing branch under the trellis net to keep it squat and avoid stretching as much as I can. I was thinking of investing in a longer tent or a dimmable light like sf1000 or ts1000, Do you think it’s worth it for my first grow?

I think you'll be ok in that tent. Maybe throw a net over the top of her and spread her out and that should keep the final height with the limit. She will probably stretch a bit but if she gets too tall you can always upgrade the tent later.

Different strains have different sensitivity to the light. But it's very unlikely that you'll get light stress at 16 inches with a 100 watt light.

I just don't like to see burnt tips, to me that's a big no no.
In nutes less is more, always.
Look at your plants not nute charts, they are reference, not iron rules.
Lower your light, your height and power output is mostly why at week 3 they look like week 1, but it's getting there.
Create some heat at least 28c to get things going more rapidly.
Other then that your plants do look very good overall.

What would a dimmable light do for you ? You will take it down to focus light at your canopy but dimm it and lose that extra light... Not logical
Better just to lower the light u have and handle conditions to make sure canopy temp and rh is solid.

DanKiller said:

I just don't like to see burnt tips, to me that's a big no no.
In nutes less is more, always.
Look at your plants not nute charts, they are reference, not iron rules.
Lower your light, your height and power output is mostly why at week 3 they look like week 1, but it's getting there.
Create some heat at least 28c to get things going more rapidly.
Other then that your plants do look very good overall.

What would a dimmable light do for you ? You will take it down to focus light at your canopy but dimm it and lose that extra light... Not logical
Better just to lower the light u have and handle conditions to make sure canopy temp and rh is solid.

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I'm using lots of calmag almost 1-1.2ml/L every watering and started to give full dose 2 weeks ago.
Are tips flipping down might be signs of burn because of overfeeding, but not the stress of light? because when I had the light at 17inch or less some leaves flipped


I thought about a dimmable light because now I hooked the light up to the highest to keep an 18inch+ distance and it's fixed now, but If I got a dimmable light it's easy I can put it in the normal height, and attach it to the flexible hook and if need it I can dim it, what do you think?

bamdamhigh said:

I'm using lots of calmag almost 1-1.2ml/L every watering and started to give full dose 2 weeks ago.
Are tips flipping down might be signs of burn because of overfeeding, but not the stress of light? because when I had the light at 17inch or less some leaves flipped


I thought about a dimmable light because now I hooked the light up to the highest to keep an 18inch+ distance and it's fixed now, but If I got a dimmable light it's easy I can put it in the normal height, and attach it to the flexible hook and if need it I can dim it, what do you think?

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The general health of your plants is pretty good. She doesn't look over fed. The slight discolouration on a tip or 2 here and there is nothing to panic about and could either be from slight under or over feeding. Plus you are judging getting into a stage of growth where she will have a higher demand for her feeds so if the soil is a little warm she's going to use it all up.

I'm not a soil guy so you might be better off getting advice on the best soil feeding practices from one of the other members.

What do you mean the light is fixed at the maximum height? Are you using ratchet ropes to hang with? Should be pretty easy to adjust it back lower down.

My guess would be that the main cause of your droopy looking leaves is either underwatering (again better to check this with a soil guy) or not enough air exchange moving through the tent. You have a decent exhaust fan pulling air through right?

Kola_Kreator said:

The general health of your plants is pretty good. She doesn't look over fed. The slight discolouration on a tip or 2 here and there is nothing to panic about and could either be from slight under or over feeding. Plus you are judging getting into a stage of growth where she will have a higher demand for her feeds so if the soil is a little warm she's going to use it all up.

I'm not a soil guy so you might be better off getting advice on the best soil feeding practices from one of the other members.

What do you mean the light is fixed at the maximum height? Are you using ratchet ropes to hang with? Should be pretty easy to adjust it back lower down.

My guess would be that the main cause of your droopy looking leaves is either underwatering (again better to check this with a soil guy) or not enough air exchange moving through the tent. You have a decent exhaust fan pulling air through right?

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It's pretty easy it put it down yes as I hung it on the other clip of the hook which doesn't move cause it's a couple of inches higher as I'm losing tons of space (soil pot around 1ft + 1.3ft for plant +almost half a ft for the light hanger) so I'm left with around 2ft till harvest that's why I'm very keen on saving any space that I can. and yes I got a fan and an exhaust fan with a filter. I will do some defoliation tomorrow for better air exchange and maybe put the light down and observe what's gonna happen.

bamdamhigh said:

It's pretty easy it put it down yes as I hung it on the other clip of the hook which doesn't move cause it's a couple of inches higher as I'm losing tons of space (soil pot around 1ft + 1.3ft for plant +almost half a ft for the light hanger) so I'm left with around 2ft till harvest that's why I'm very keen on saving any space that I can. and yes I got a fan and an exhaust fan with a filter. I will do some defoliation tomorrow for better air exchange and maybe put the light down and observe what's gonna happen.

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Grab yourself one of these. It connects to a free app on your phone and will give you a ppfd reading which is accurate within 3% in comparison to an apogee

When your plants first switch to their bloom cycle and you first see pistels your in kinda a pre bloom period. on a photo period we call this the stretch .you probably had a period of rapid upward growth right about the time you first saw pistels? Now after 2 weeks of first seeing flowers form that will probably stop any day now and more energy will go into plumping up your flowers. Don't panic and stay the course

bamdamhigh said:

I'm using lots of calmag almost 1-1.2ml/L every watering

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By the looks of it I'm overfeeding and I do 2-3ml/gallon of calmag

I hanged the light down (now at 16inches 100w not dimmable) maximum height, did more LST and defoliation for better air exchange. Gonna observe in the next days signs of bounce or light stress

VaSmile said:

By the looks of it I'm overfeeding and I do 2-3ml/gallon of calmag

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I feed lots of cal-mag cause of the strong undimmable light as it’s mentioned by spider farmer, "you might need more calmag than you expect" that was written in the light catalog. So I’m just feeding it to avoid symptoms. Also, i got lots of red stems on the way so I can’t say it didn’t help.