1st indoor grow!!!!! is this right??????

Hi guys, this is my first indoor grow and im not sure that everything is right. Any tips or constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Heres what i got so.

The box that im using is 18-1/2W x 18-1/2L x 28"T and its lined in mylar. I have one 5 1/2" exaust fan and one 5 1/2" intake fan. Im using 2-23w 6500k cfl and 1-36w 6500k cfl and plan to add two more 23w 6500k cfl tomorrow. Temps are around 80 with the lights on and 73 while off. humidity is between 50-60. seeds were germed in papertowel
for 36 hours. Their are 4 short rider seeds from Nirvana seed co. each in a 6 gal. pot with MG organic potting mix. pics will be up soon.

My questions are this..

How often should i water and how much.

Tap water ok?

What kind of nutes? how much? when? how often?

Do i need more light?

Thanks for your help

Tap water is fine if its room temp. I use fox farm big bloom for veg 1/2 table spoon per gallon of water i use on my baby. thats my 2cents

Tap water is fine, try to let it sit for 24-48 hours to get it room temp and let the chlorine evaporate.

how many weeks old are they? Cant tell you watering plans or nute plans unless i know that. Its completly different depending how large and strong they are.

With the 5 bulbs you will have you will have plenty for veg, however the more the faster it will grow. Also when you hit flower you will need almost 4 times that at least with 4 plants and be switching to 2700k bulbs.

Also if your using 6 gal pots expect then to reach 3 to 3 and 1/2 feet tall at least unless it is a short breed. Or you use LST and/or top it. Again this depends on how long you veg and how tall they are when you switch to flower mode.

Lose the miracle grow soil, the nutes in that will kill your plant, I got some pro-mix (good alternative if you can't find fox farm) from menards for super cheap and it works amazingly.:

Edit: if you do keep the miracle grow soil I would be very careful adding nutes (actually i wouldn't add them at all) because you'll wind up burning the plant.

Thanks for the info guys. Keep em coming. I germed the seeds until they cracked and planted 10/15/10 but they haven't broke ground yet. Im hoping soon. Heres some photos of my grow. All ideas are are welcome.

i use tap water, sometimes i let it sit, sometimes i forget...never had a problem.. but i guess the drinking water here is really high quality..not that that matters...and i use nutes at a quarter strength like every week about, the rest is just water.

I'll preface this with a warning note: I'm a noob. I can only put up info that has really saved my bacon and is relevant to you.

pH your water. I can't tell you how critical that seems to be. For me it was recently life/death. I ended up with 2 dead plants of a very hard to get strain before i learned my lesson. For what it's worth, just adding nutes to the water seemed to mostly solve the pH problem. Seems like most nutes are slightly acidic anyway. Get a test kit (ph up + ph down + indicator). It's like 20 bucks of totally worth it.

Get more lights. When you think you have enough, get more. Penetration with the CFL's is poor at best. You'll want twice as many as you think you need. I have 3 in an area less than half the size of yours and it's not nearly enough. Thankfully that's my pre-veg cabinet and it's not supposed to do anything but solidify rooting into the coco.

Try coco. It's cheap and other than needing a LOT more nutes you will probably have an easier time of it. So far for me it has been exactly like dirt except for small daily waterings and the almost inability of coco to let you overwater your plants. Mine have grown harder and faster in coco than in the premium dirts. FWIW, my flowering set is in dirt. My vegging set is in coco and doing better really.

Oh yeah, and flush your MG soil with pH'd water. Get those MG nutes out of there. My plants HATED MG. As soon as I flushed that trash out and buffered the soil with some proper Botanicare nutes it was a whole nuther story. Note, the MG nutes seem to have caused my plants to droop. It wasn't until I flushed that they came back and after I re-nuted the water with good stuff they started popping new growth really fast.

MG FTMFL

coco? like chocolate milk mix???

coco is a type of medium but it is usually used in hydropics or aeroponics. I am a fairly new grower only have three grows under my belt but I have successfully used the miracle gro organic choice I would say that it does slow down growing time vs pro-mix (used both and now use pro-mix organic). I personally flowered under Cfls and I can say with all certainty that you will be dissapointed with the results but if you really cant afford a 400watt high pressure sodium setup than you will need atleast in my oppinion 10 23 watt 2700k cfl bulbs for four plants. I use tap water or rain water as I have a rain barrel in my backyard when I use tap water I let it sit for 24 hours and I only check Ph when I am adding nutes because I know the Ph of my tap water but I do agree with the earlier post get yourself a cheap Ph indicator and some ph up and down. Right now I use advanced nutrients but I am going to be switching to an organic nutrient system as I have finally found one I like (after extensive research and talking to my hydro shop). As for watering goes I use a moisture indicator but another way to know is put your finger roughly 2 inches below the soil if it feels dry it is time to water. I am a soil grower so I do one watering with nutrients and then two without until the last week of flowering where I use no nutrients at all. Nutrients come in all kinds and I cant really recommend the best one for you ask your local hydro shop or do some research but it ultimately comes down to preference. Use what works for you and stick to it. Happy growing.