I can't decide when to switch to 12/12 advice??

Here's my 4 plants the 3 are random seeds, the other is a skywalker OG kush clone. The seeds are 3 weeks old in the pictures I topped all of them the day before at there 5th node. I switched my room up today now it is 6ft x 4ft x 7ft with one 1000 watt hps in a air cooled reflected hood. My goal is a large yield but my babies can't grow larger than 44''-48'' to make sure they don't grow into the light. Also I'm using 3 gal. pots with fox farm soils using general hydro flora series nutes. watering about every 5-6 days, more often now. Now does anyone have any suggestions on when I should switch to 12/12? Also I have no idea if my seeds are indica or sativa opinions?? Thanks!!

Whoops I jacked up the pictures big time, I added each pic twice my bad, the first pic as 14 days old, the sencond is at 21 days old. All the other pictures are in between and up close shots of my topping.

the tallest is more of a sativa and will grow really tall at the end of flowering , the others look more indica, you can switch flowering now yield would be around 2ounces a plant if there is no shock or stress, my advice to you from my 1 year experince now , is never veg with hps it just doesn't grow as fast as CFL's or MH , i tried it my plant was slow and not healthy exactly like yours, try out, keep it another week veg but use cfl or mh and you'll see the difference , once i had one plant keep it on cfl for a week then 400w hps the second week " i wanted it to grow faster" so i thought.. but the whole plant didn't look so healthy the leaves were aging and bending downwards , the third week shifted back to cfl and saw a big difference in a better way, when the third week was done i shifted to flowering for 8 weeks, yields was around 2 ounces , good luck

to me i would wait a little 12 to 18 inchs tall i like to get to your hight

I'm still learning but flower when mine reach about 8 inches. They finish around 3ft including 5 gallon buckets. I'm under a 1k hps as well but in a 4x4x6.5 tent. If you're experienced then you could easily surpass my totals.

imo... veg a few (1-3)more weeks... you can always do shit to em to make them not get too close to the lights during flowering...

3 weeks might be a bit much... ill say 2 more..

agree with the cfl idea.. my lil babies are about the same age, slightly younger, w/ cfl and are about the same size.. but a lot bushier insides

Astral Zoom said:

imo... veg a few (1-3)more weeks... you can always do shit to em to make them not get too close to the lights during flowering...

3 weeks might be a bit much... ill say 2 more..

agree with the cfl idea.. my lil babies are about the same age, slightly younger, w/ cfl and are about the same size.. but a lot bushier insides

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then again i fimmed them several times, so i wont side either way on the cfl vs. hps veg.. but my electric bill is a lot lower than yours... just sayin..

they look puuurrrdddyy though!!!

Yeah - let them grow up before hitting them with 12/12.

I read you want a minimum of 5 nodes. But plants are too small then for my taste.

It looks like I'm going to veg them about 10 more days, by then they will be 5 weeks old. My goal is to harvest and have some smoke able (more like a lot) herb for 420 this year. I'm going to be cutting it real close but id rather have bigger plants and more bud and smoke my brains out 2 weeks after so if it doesn't happen no big deal. Oh and this is my first grow, I'm really trying to get it right the first go around

Budbrother69 said:

It looks like I'm going to veg them about 10 more days, by then they will be 5 weeks old. My goal is to harvest and have some smoke able (more like a lot) herb for 420 this year. I'm going to be cutting it real close but id rather have bigger plants and more bud and smoke my brains out 2 weeks after so if it doesn't happen no big deal. Oh and this is my first grow, I'm really trying to get it right the first go around

Click to expand...

This girl started out less than 8 inches before flowering. This is 7 weeks later....
She's already over double a 5 gallon buckets height but started out less than 8 inches.

No offense to others that have posted the nonsense about using CFL's instead of your HPS for veg, but give your head a shake. There is no possible way you will get the same growth rate using CFL's compared to a HID, period. To the person who had issues, it sounds to me like they were encountering heat stress. Take a look at my avatar and tell me my 400W HPS is no good for a 30 day veg? Right. Environment plays a huge roll!

To OP: If you are limited for height, then I would add a screen in about a weeks time to keep your height in check.

I think they are really enjoying the hps, I know I would do better with MH but overall I think the 1000 watt of hps will do better than less wattage of florescents. These are my babies today, I switched up my room and it really brought down the temperatures. I was running low eighties at plant level before but now it is mid to high seventies and the hottest part by the light is still less than 90. Im trying to decide weather to top my main shoots another time has anyone seen this done or done it? You can see growth has started again on the two main tips now after topping. Thank all of you for your input I really appreciate it.