New grower - stems droopy, low humidity

[whipsilk]

Hi everyone! I'm a first time grower using a small DWS tank. My li'l guys are a week or so past germination, with 3 to 5 sets of nice, bright green serrated leaves. I'm growing two Blueberry, two Lemon Skunk. Both have white stems about 5 inches long, BUT the stems (at least at this stage) aren't strong enough to support the leaf growth. They're just collapsed onto the top of the grow tank lid. Is that normal? If not, is there anything I can do to strengthen the stems?

One of my LS plants has a crimp in the stem about half an inch below the leaves, so that the leaves just hang down, although they appear to be developing, though at a slightly lower rate than the other plants. Should I ignore this, give up on the plant, or maybe cut it just below the crimp (I'm afraid the latter will kill the plant as it's so immature)?

I'm also a bit concerned about the humidity in my li'l grow room. It's running between 10% and 20% RH. I've tried a bowl of water under the grow light to increase evaporation, and now added an evaporative humidifier, but neither seem to help. Any suggestions as to increasing the humidity? The room gets lots of fresh, fairly cool air from a small fan in the open door. The temp seems to run around 80-83 degrees right where the plants are. My grow light is a 400 watt MH, now about two feet above the plants.

Thanks for any suggestions, reassurances, etc.

 

[oldman60]

Try putting the water right in front of the fan. An air stone in the container will help vaporize the water faster.

 

[reparboon]

yes definitely get the humidity up above 50% at least.. even get a cardboard box cut the top off and put saran wrap on the top and put over the plants..(like a humidity dome) as for them bending over, get a chop stick or anything and twisty tie it up to it to hold and keep it upright.. to make the stems stronger you have to have a fan lightly blowing on/past them so they shake their leaves. the fan will create a reaction to the plant that it needs a stronger stem to survive.

 

[cannasensei]

Take a straw from McDonald's or the like cut it to length slit the side and put it around the meristem. This will introduce some stability. If ur temps.allow get the light a.little.close to them it sounds like they are stretching.
Then take (as mentioned above or) water bottles. But the bottom off remove the label and place over seedlings with the lids on. This will contain a lot of the needed humidity. Hope that helps