I've always deleafed in the past but at certain points and its wrked fine but this time it hurt them
.only thing I changed was I did it later at day 7 instead of doing it at the beginning.
Yep you slowed their growth a bit, but they absolutely might recover and just take an extra week or two to finish properly. Just see how they progress. It’s also possible they might stay stunted.
Personally I prefer to do all my heavy pruning during veg so the plant has time to recover. This allows me to control and direct the plants growth and get the shape and bud sites I want. I trim lower sucker branches and remove random lower bud sites to prevent them from growing larf. This allows the plant to focus all its energy where I want it.
During flower the plant needs its resources so removing energy factories and storage sites is counter productive, and can cause situations like you are in now.
I keep my pruning and and leaf removal limited to necessity while in flower. If there are a couple large leaves that actually seem to be blocking light I might remove them. Other wise those leaves are what feed your plant, not the buds. That is why the plants grow more leaves after you guys strip them all off. They need more to keep growing right.
