Sluggish Autos - Help needed please!

Hi, this is my first auto-flower grow and its going pretty dreadfully. The plants are under a 250w MH (soon to swap to HPS) and are currently 4 weeks old, they were on a light cycle of 24/0 up until a few days ago there now on 20/4; which seems to be helping growth. I'm feeding them AN Micro Grow 0.5ml/l will introduce Bloom in the next week. Recently started using a root stim 2.5ml/l to encourage root growth to try and pick them back up. The plants themselves are sitting in 15l air pots and had been fed 4l every 4/5 days but the coco was taking so long to dry im now only feeding them a liter every couple of days. Temps are all ok 27C constantly, got good air circulation too. Dont know what the problem is, why they are growing so slow and barely drinking.

These pictures are a few days old, since the lighting change and root nutes they have picked up a little bit, but still they should be this small, ones every growing hairs and its only 3" tall.

Any help or push in the right direction is greatly appreciated, cant find anything relevant online elsewhere.

Thanks, Collie

Did you transfer? The only small autos i've seen were started in gallon pots.

soil looks a bit too dense
which would lead to over watering
is the pot really heavy?

What are your genetics. Sounds like a good setup. I've done a lot of autos, and the only problems I had were poor genetics. Also most autos don't like over watering. I've also not had outstanding luck with coco with autos. Good luck. Peace & be kind

Thanks for the quick response. I did transfer 3 or the 4 from very small pots into their 15l air pots, but that was weeks and weeks ago, thought they would have picked up by now. How can i undense the coco, i had thought this might have been the problem but couldnt think of a way to get around it. Will upload some new pictures taken today to see ho their looking. Thanks again

add perlite

but you would have to mix it in before hand

Yeah it looks overwatered too me. From what I hear autos are sensitive to nutes and overwatering.

my plant is 3 weeks old and is 4x that size

i use coco
but i mix it with some soil,moss and and at least 1/4 perlite
this time around used a vermiculite instead of moss
added some lime and worm castings

yea, the perlite will make the soil much more loose and let the roots move around easier, and make it less compact after watering, more oxygen etc. Seems like something else would be going on though, but that soil almost looks like hard dirt with some coco on top.

i agree soil is way too dense ive got 2 autos growing and the first 1 is in realy light airy peat free compost and is going realy well. there is no way that i could water it 4 litres it would just drain out the bottom. the second one i planted in some soil i mixed from the garden with compost its alot more dense holds alot more water and growth was alot slower until about week 4. its doing ok now.

OrangeHaze said:

yea, the perlite will make the soil much more loose and let the roots move around easier, and make it less compact after watering, more oxygen etc. Seems like something else would be going on though, but that soil almost looks like hard dirt with some coco on top.

Click to expand...

something else is going on
manual lock out of N from being to wet
nooxygen in the root zone
and probably salt build ups from lack of drainage throwing the ph off