Need some confirmation

I am new to growing and decided to try my hand at a small DWC system. now i have five small plants (2w/o) that are all sharing a 5 gallon rooter bucked being ran by a 170 gallon air pump. lighting: 400w MH/HPS conversion lamp with digital ballast. i believe my environment is all in order (80F max 65F min, Rh 40-55%, Ph 6.2) my ppm meter is on the way but I'm only up to about 1/2 strength in my nutes. the problem is, when i woke up this morning my plants have started to kinda sag. i know this is usually to watering problems but I'm growing in water and my air pump should be plenty big enough to keep my DO levels in line but i have no way to verify this. i have 2 major theories other than watering problems. 1) the roots are getting too much light; I've painted my tub twice but a little light still gets in and i don't know if that is going to be a problem. 2) the plants have rapidly grown recently and maybe the leave are just a little heavy for the stems and they will perk up? any insight into any areas of improvement is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Light of any sort in the res is very bad. Absolute darkness. Ph is high for hydro especially for vegging, 5.6-5.8 is what you want. What is res temp?

superstoner1 said:

Light of any sort in the res is very bad. Absolute darkness. Ph is high for hydro especially for vegging, 5.6-5.8 is what you want. What is res temp?

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i keep the res temp below 70 at all times. its usually 65-70. only a few times has it creeped up to over 70.I'm currently using frozen bottles to keep the temp regulated. ok i over fixed my Ph on accident i dropped it to 5.4 with ph down and i dont have any ph up... its only .1 below so i assume thats not much to worry about?

When i just got home and checked on them, they seem to be back to normal. I have them on a 6 hour dark cycle so im wondering if the leave naturally droop a bit when they do not have light?

Oh, thats it. Lights off is rest time. Imagine holding your arms up all day.

Do you add anything to the rest to help with bacteria growth? I use h202 when I change the res once a week but n that's it. Now that the roots are touching the water, root rot is a concern.

I am a big believer in h2o2, for first aide. In hydro i believe in bennies.

I've heard that h2o2 can Increase DO levels so it seemed reasonable. Plus I don't think it bothers good bacteria but I could have totally made that up.

These are the babies. They are growing up quick and and was wanting to know some opinion on flowering. They are about two weeks old and have more than 3 nodes so when should i switch to HPS and 12/12 lighting? my space is about 3x3x5. I'm not looking to grow any monsters but i want the system to be worth the money/time invested. Also I've been planning on re-potting the healthiest two females into their own 5 gallon buckets in 6" pots (they are in 3" now) but i cant sex them until i start flowering... not sure what to do. just keep them as it until i can sex?

I was under the impression that SCROG requires definite females. Otherwise there would be huge gaps in the canopy

Do you bend the tops or do any sort of training? I've hear that you can increase the yield by tricking the plants into growing multiple main buds.I plan to clone one of my females and do SCROG next time for sure. This time I'm just going to flower at about 10 inches and I should be fine as far as grow space.