250W HPS with CFL's Grow

I have 6 plants 3 weeks old under 250W HPS with 4 30W CFL's at 6400K 2000 lumens each. So my room has 38,000 Lumens total. I'm growing from bagseed and using 2 gallons pots with 25% miracgle grow perlite and 75% miracle grow time release soil from Home Depot, I know people don't recommend this but it's my first grow.

The leaves are turning yellowish and the plants look like shit. I have a 2 X 235CFM fans, one for intake one the side blowing on the plants and one for exhaust out the top. The temperature is consistently 78-79 degrees while the light is on and probably 65 while off.

The light schedule is 18/6 on timers and the moisture in the soil is around 5 out of 10 (using home depot PH and moisture tester)

Is it better to water a little bit all the time or a bunch all at once?

Why are the leaves yellow, why are they sagging, and why does it look like once leaf wilted and dried up on one side?

I dont want to water too much and cause nute burn.

Sorry here's the pics

I use the same soil too and it's fine, but the thing is with time released nutes it will give nute burn based on how much you water. The more you water the more nutes are released so you should only water when the soil is completely dry up to a depth of about 2-3 inches. Just give them some time and don't overwater and they will be fine. I water every 3-5 days. Overwatering is the biggest mistake by new growers, just have some patience. And btw you might want to eventually transplant to 3 or 5 gallon pots because growing in a 2 gallon pot will usually result in the plant being root bound.

Im going to flower at 1 foot so they should be about 2 feet when their done, I think the 2 gallon pots with be fine.

Ill hold off on the watering until the soils completely dries out to around 1 on the meter then.

how much water should I give them? split 1 gallon between all six pots?

You should soak them when you water and then let them get to where the plants start to wilt before watering again. Put them in a tray and let them soak up the runoff for 30 min, then drain runoff away. If you just water a little here and there and don't soak the whole thing then the plants don't end up able to use the whole pot for roots, dry pockets form in the soil where it stops taking water easily and they end up rootbound even though they may have not even used half the space. Also watering too often and not letting the media get fairly dry between watering quickly leads to plant killing problems like root rot and gnat larvae eating your rotten roots.


That might mean watering once a week or less at first, and then end up every day at the end when they're all fat it just depends. Let the plants tell you, not the meter.

A 250w light can't support 2' of plant. You'll get 6" of fat bud and the rest will be wasted fluff which equals wasted grow time. Grow a handfull of small plants under that or SCROG or something. Finish height less than 1.5 feet tall, more like one foot tall.

Don't go by what some meter says, the plant will wilt when it's dry, then water. While dry lift it and feel how light it is... From then on you can just lift a pot and know when it's close to dry. Huge difference wet vs dry.

Those kind of shitty not so healthy babies is what you get more often than not with miracle grow. Half the time when the plants get bigger and the nutes in the soil wear out then they start to look healthy, the other half of the time they're stunted for life.

Lastly that HPS is over twice as far away as optimal and those cfl's are so far away they're just task lighting, not actually growing anything.
Your pots are way way way too big for that light, the grow area is too big for that light, you need drastic change if you want optimal growth.

Thanks for the responses, one person says to use bigger pots and another says to use smaller pots, can I get a third opinion??

The lights were raised for the pictures, I have the CFL about 2 inches from the top of the plant and the HPS about 7-8". Here's another pic. The pot seems very light as if it was dry.

The looked real good until yesterday. I am using distilled water, is there something I can get at Home Depot to control the PH??


How can I tell when the plant wilts? Do these look wilted?

I think they were just wilted, the soil was COMPLETELY dry. I watered with 4 gallons between the 6 pots and there was hardly any runoff.

Hopefully they look good tomorrow!!

I disagree with OregonMeds, the HPS and CFL's will do just fine in that space, look at my grow, I have 4 ladies 6 weeks into flowering under 1 150w HPS and 6 26w CFL's in a 2x3 grow closet. I believe your problem is the soil, I recommend watering every 4 days or so, just make sure the top couple inches of soil are dry.

I generally concur with the others....those plants are wilted due to lack of water. At their stage of growth, use a balanced fertilizer (I personally prefer a liquid nute) and water when the soil is dry 1-2" down inside the pot. For me (looking at your pics, my set-up is similar to yours) I water every other day. I also agree that you need bigger pots if you want any respectable yield. Even if you are only gonna grow them to 2 feet, I would put each plant in their own pot (2-3 gallon). When each plant has its own pot and doesn't have to compete with others for nutes and oxygen, they will be much happier.