Help with drooping plants, very worried

Hello all. Ive looked up solutions to my plants issues but decided I need some help and opinions before it gets worse. My plants are a few days shy of being 1 month old. I am using roots organic potting soil, a 600 watt hps, a 336 cfm inline fan, 3 gallon fabric pots, and roots organic nutrients. The soil ph is 6.5-6.8. The temperatures are 78-82F degrees during the day, and about 65-67F at night. The humidity is 38-50% through the day. I have put my light further away from the plants in case that had any role in this. My grow space is 3x3 and 5 ft 8 inches tall.

I overwatered the first week of the seedlings lives (used a poor quality soil) and corrected it by watering sparsely and transplanting into fresh roots organic.

Last week I ran into a fungus gnat problem and fed my plants last sunday with some water with neem oil to help kill any larvae (1/2 gallon each) until some runoff came out. They started to slowly droop days just before I watered, though. I used yellow sticky cards and caught a lot of them, I also put 1-2 inches of perlite on the top of my soil and so far the gnats have really died down as a result. I waited until yesterday until the pots were completely dry and light and fed them a half strength dose of the liquid nutrients for their first time combined with a full dose of the dry elemental fertilizer (calcium/magnesium supplement). I did this because the plants were showing what appeared to be a calcium deficiency.

I can't imagine I am overwatering. It doesn't seem I am, but if that's the case, then I may need more ventilation to dry out the pots even though they seem to dry out appropriately. I don't know if I am underwatering because they look more droopy today than yesterday before I fed them. I'm leaning more towards underwatering because the leaves seems a bit dry and brittle, but not much. Here are some photos of the plants that are doing the worst. I also topped them about a week ago at the 5th node.

Edit: could this be nitrogen toxicity? I haven't fed them anything until yesterday. If so, then pray for them, lol.

I appreciate any help

First photo is a white widow runt by seedsman. The next two are my two grape infernos by tga. I have another WW and 2 Brian berry coughs that are progressively getting worse, but these 3 are the ones that are the most sad looking

Give them some water and see if they perk up. Looks wilted but your camera angle makes it a little difficult to judge. A side shot would help. I suspect you may have some dry spots in your pot so a bottom watering every now and then will help, assuming they are wilted.

the fungus gnat larvae feeds on your roots and they may have done some serious damage, not sure neem oil will kill the larvae they make a special top dressing gnat and larvae killer you should try im betting deep down you still have larvae feeding on your roots.

Bugeye said:

Give them some water and see if they perk up. Looks wilted but your camera angle makes it a little difficult to judge. A side shot would help. I suspect you may have some dry spots in your pot so a bottom watering every now and then will help, assuming they are wilted.

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I will give that a shot thank you! I'll post a couple side shots soon

tpc_mikey said:

the fungus gnat larvae feeds on your roots and they may have done some serious damage, not sure neem oil will kill the larvae they make a special top dressing gnat and larvae killer you should try im betting deep down you still have larvae feeding on your roots.

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You are probably right. Is what you speak of diatomaceous earth? Would I apply anything like that over my perlite or should I work it in towards the soil underneath? Thank you for your help

Happy Leaf said:

You are probably right. Is what you speak of diatomaceous earth? Would I apply anything like that over my perlite or should I work it in towards the soil underneath? Thank you for your help

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Yes just follow directions but sure you need to remove some of the perlite first Neem oil works like a drug on bugs it doesnt kill them instantly, it actually alters there mind where they cant think when they eat it, they forget to mate, they forget to eat etc. so they die eventually.