First Grow on Day 16! Autoflower with T5 high output

Hello everyone! I'm currently on my first grow and have selected to work with some autoflower strains. Currently i have 2 white widow, 2 northern lights and one New york city. I'm doing this grow in a 2 x 4 tent with a 4" inline fan and filter. The lighting i went with was an 8 bulb 4' t5 HO fixture.
My ladies are all on day 16 (other than Northern lights 2 who was a couple of days behind) and i believe they are doing pretty well for my first time. They are a little on the shorter size, is this normal for day 16 under florescent? the fixture is approx 3" away from the tallest plant, should i move it away a little to allow for a bit of stretching? any questions or comments are welcome

Family Shot



Northern Lights 1


Northern Lights 2



New York City


White Widow 1


White Widow 2


what do you guys think?

No u don't want em to stretch..they'll do that on their own when they start to flower

They look good. Too bad more beginners don't have first grows that nice. You don't want them to stretch.

thanks guys, ya i didnt think i wanted it to stretch but i figured id ask. I can't wait to see how they turn out =D

They look great! It seems they are suffering from the slightest heat stress and they could use a humidity bump to say around 60-75% but i'm just knit-picking! keep up the good work

Miss.Rabbit said:

They look great! It seems they are suffering from the slightest heat stress and they could use a humidity bump to say around 60-75% but i'm just knit-picking! keep up the good work

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Can I just ask how you diagnosed heat stress from the photos?
I'm not contradicting, it's just that to a newbie like me those leaves look perfectly green, lush and healthy.
I don't like people having skills I don't posess.

I'll move the light up a bit, how far do you think it should go up? an inch or so? whats the best way for me to increase the humidity without a humidifier?

Aaron8001 said:

White Widow 2
View attachment 2597644View attachment 2597645

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bruvvamoff said:

Can I just ask how you diagnosed heat stress from the photos?
I'm not contradicting, it's just that to a newbie like me those leaves look perfectly green, lush and healthy.
I don't like people having skills I don't posess.

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These photos show the best example. The leaf fringes standing/ pointing up to that degree means the leaf is trying to dissipate as much moisture as possible but isn't able to. This is caused by heat stress and lack of humidity.

Allowing the heat stress to continue the temps within the leaves will climb easily to 110F. Once at 110F the internal chemistry is disrupted and the manufactured proteins are broken down thus becoming unavailable to the plant(similar to ph lockout), as the temps continue to climb they have to use and evaporate more water ;taking up 70% of the plants energy in the process. Stress, even in the slightest can set plants back 10 days!

It still seems early on to me so I just though I would let you know. Good luck!

Miss.Rabbit said:

Allowing the heat stress to continue the temps within the leaves will climb easily to 110F. Once at 110F the internal chemistry is disrupted and the manufactured proteins are broken down thus becoming unavailable to the plant(similar to ph lockout), as the temps continue to climb they have to use and evaporate more water ;taking up 70% of the plants energy in the process. Stress, even in the slightest can set plants back 10 days!

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I'm so turned on right now.
Talk technical to me, Yeah!

She's right tho.

Thank a lot for everyones input and comments. so i've moved the light up an inch or two and added a couple cups of water to hopefully help increase the humidity. should this solve the issue?

Aaron8001 said:

Thank a lot for everyones input and comments. so i've moved the light up an inch or two and added a couple cups of water to hopefully help increase the humidity. should this solve the issue?

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it should help i'd also make sure there's plenty of airflow on the canopy as well...

Miss.Rabbit said:

These photos show the best example. The leaf fringes standing/ pointing up to that degree means the leaf is trying to dissipate as much moisture as possible but isn't able to. This is caused by heat stress and lack of humidity.

Allowing the heat stress to continue the temps within the leaves will climb easily to 110F. Once at 110F the internal chemistry is disrupted and the manufactured proteins are broken down thus becoming unavailable to the plant(similar to ph lockout), as the temps continue to climb they have to use and evaporate more water ;taking up 70% of the plants energy in the process. Stress, even in the slightest can set plants back 10 days!

Click to expand...

So curly leaves = too hot right? Thanks for the info.
I guess those of us who use CFL don't really see this problem much.

Like its warm when my t5's are within a couple of inches of the plants, however the highest i see it get is like 86 - 87 (i didnt think that was too hot). so i moved the lights away another couple of inches and the temp sits around 80. since moving the light, i notice that one particularly is still curling up. on another plant there are a couple of spots that look at is the plant is dying, so I'm thinking that on their next water its time to start adding some low dose nutrients. the other thing that could be the culprit could be my low humidity (currently sitting at 30%), I'm having an issue getting it to stay any higher. with my inline fan running 24/7 how am i supposed to get any humidity to stay in the tent?