Thin and long stems, little leaf grow

[mashikag]

I am growing AK-47 and Aurora Indica under 600w hps light. Today is the 7th day of the grow so they are in a pretty early stage. However it is my first grow and I am worried about the plants growing long(longest one is 8cm high already!) and thin and the leaves developing slowly.

My assumptions were that I have put the light to high up and they werent getting enough light so today morning I have moved the light a little bit closer. As a result the leaves grew a little bit more but they still got a bit taller which worries me because the stem is pretty thin too and if they grow much higher it wont be able to support itself.

Are my assumptions correct? Also how high should I set the light?

Also I have two long 18 watt cfl bulbs in stock, should I maybe switch to them for the early stage?

Another thing worth of mentioning is that I have planted the seeds in bio-bizz light mix so maybe there is something wrong with that?

 

[GigaGrew]

your assumptions about the light are correct. a 600 can probably go about 12 inches from them if in a cool tube or maybe 15-17 inches away if not in a cool tube. they are too young to go any close than that.
Just make sure to not get any liquid on the leaves when the light is that close or you will cause bad burns.

you could add some supplemental lighting such as strip lights or cfls, they need to be in the 6400/6500 kelvin range to produce the blue lights our plants love during vegetation, here is a couple of sponsors that could probably hook you up with the right kinds of supplemental lights and of course there is a discount for 420 magazine members =D

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Don't worry about the existing stretch, when you repot you can just repot up to the neck so to speak =)

 

[Kushmaster216]

just my suggestion is to buy some cfls or if you have a switchable ballast get a mh bulb.youcan veg with a hps and a lot of people have done great grows with them. everything will start turning around. some peoples grow envioronment is just notgood with vegging with a hps. id say once youswitch is when those will go green again. are you using any nutes? also if you change lights you can get them closer.i had cfls damn near touching my plant. it will also cause less stretch... but but some twisty ties in thereto prop up the stem so they dontget a chance to bend or fall over. catch it before it happens don't watch it happen

 

[GigaGrew]

nothing wrong with those plants, they don't need nutrients at that age. moving your light as close as is safe is all you need to do. my recommendation for blue light is just about optimising grow conditions, they simply like blue light when in vegetation and will have more nodes per height with more blue.