Cfls wattage upgrade "burning"... Please help!!

I was recently using six 14w daylight with two 9w softwhite, it's all I had laying around the house.. I just tried switching them out to 23 watters, I noticed yellowing a little "pre signs" of burning? The bulbs are even 2-3 feet above the plants, and I know that cfls should be close to get the light to benefit the plant the way that they should be. So what's going on? Too much light reflecting? To much watts? Are the plants I young for the upgrade?

I have 5 plants total about 1-1.5 months of age, about 10 inches tall or more for one plant <- just so you guys can guess what they look like, if you guys need pics i can definitely do that also! What ever helps me resolve this issue.

The closet I'm in is roughy 24" width 24" length and about 60-70" height, lined with wood flooring insulation from Home Depot. With a 6" corner fan blowing on all lights and plants. Temp is pretty high at certain points of the day around 80-81 degrees and low at 78-79.

I'd like to get a stealth can going for next grow, this is my first grow also.

Please don't troll me.. If you don't have something helpful/nice to say, I ask for you to just keep your comments to you're self please and thanks!!

no it is not too much watts or light, and 2-3 ft away from plants will definitely cause stretching in the plants. CFL produce a lot of heat and are not efficient forms of lighting except of course if both heat and light are required like in a cloning chamber but with the heat ranges you mentioned I doubt it is heat. It could be a form or deficiency or PH off range. IMO remove the CFL and get a 250W HPS for that closet and check your nute and PH levels , hope this helps

Yeah I'm drawn to the hps/mh setups, i was just gonna stick it out with these till i get my stealth cab built. The cfls cost me almost 20 bucks total for everything so i took that lol its definitely a budget grow right now.. Thanks tho man a friend of mine also said ph deficiency so ill be checking that out for sure.

Put up a pic
And I'll give you my best guess.
Right now its not light or heat...I run 24,23watt bulbs in a 20x26" cab and a few 42's...you want to at least match the suns avg output..you want to aim for 7k lumens per sqft..and up to mid 80's are fine..

Yeah post a pic if you can OP, not that I would be of much help, I am just nosey.

Well sadly looks like my camera just went up&#8230; So unfortunately not any pics for a few days&#8230; Maybe it'll be gone by then, but thanks for the best help you guys can give!

Got some good news got some pics, can't really see the yellowing in the pics it was super early detection also i just wanted to catch it before major damage. In these pics you can see the leaves look very "rooty", may i say? Some curling and droopy look to some also.

Any comments? Much appreciated, first grow.

Sorry for the lack of photos, to the amount of information i can give. Camera is broken only photos for now. Taken december 15th and 16th.

The "rooty" looking one.


You can barely tell that its curling and drooping..

looks like early signs of Mg deficiency and Iron deficiency. this can be a combination of a ph being too high over 7 locking iron out and magnesium deficiency since MJ often require extra Mg. soil looks good with all that airy perlite, you could try to feed with a balanced light fert mix using Ph buffer and added epsom salt but this is only a suggestion for reference, you probably will need more research to be sure what's happening, mostly, if you could get the tool to test soil PH it will be very helpful, but be careful if you will buy, lots of soil PH testers that don't actually work

Yes I agree it looks like iron def in new growth and slight mag...your feeding slightly too much imo which is odd that it didn't lower your ph enough..means your soil is pretty high..I notice slight patches of coloring on some leaves in the second pic.imo that looks like ph swings..I'm no expert in these matters but its from the plant taking up more of different types of nutes and when the soil is dry and soaking......
Watering causes most problems(and since that's one of the causes imo..) so that's what I look at first.. I notice you recently watered, but not at the edges in the bottom pic? So I look closer and see some algae on the perlite behind it..makes me wonder if your battling some watering issues..lower your lights a bit, put the bulbs back to a few inches. Raise your humidity too..you have that fan constant, turn it a notch lower if you can or raise your humidity will help give your leaves a thinner greener more luscious look
Also lower your nutes..tips be turning

No burn though
And again just my opinion

zem said:

looks like early signs of Mg deficiency and Iron deficiency. this can be a combination of a ph being too high over 7 locking iron out and magnesium deficiency since MJ often require extra Mg. soil looks good with all that airy perlite, you could try to feed with a balanced light fert mix using Ph buffer and added epsom salt but this is only a suggestion for reference, you probably will need more research to be sure what's happening, mostly, if you could get the tool to test soil PH it will be very helpful, but be careful if you will buy, lots of soil PH testers that don't actually work

Click to expand...

Thanks for your input!! I have one of those testers, it does ph, light penetration, and moister. The soil is fox farms, along with nutes Grow big. How ever I ran out of my rain water the last watering, I had to use spring water " deer park ". I tried to let it sit for a few hours, with the cap off.. But a few hours won't break that water down. I was leaving to go outa town, think it might be from the water I used? Adding Epsom salt? Wouldn't it raise the ph? Ill definitely be looking into these factors! Thank you!

Spring water can have a very high ph.......
"Well there's your problem" lol
If you have a ph tester why weren't you using it?

qwizoking said:

Yes I agree it looks like iron def in new growth and slight mag...your feeding slightly too much imo which is odd that it didn't lower your ph enough..means your soil is pretty high..I notice slight patches of coloring on some leaves in the second pic.imo that looks like ph swings..I'm no expert in these matters but its from the plant taking up more of different types of nutes and when the soil is dry and soaking......
Watering causes most problems(and since that's one of the causes imo..) so that's what I look at first.. I notice you recently watered, but not at the edges in the bottom pic? So I look closer and see some algae on the perlite behind it..makes me wonder if your battling some watering issues..lower your lights a bit, put the bulbs back to a few inches. Raise your humidity too..you have that fan constant, turn it a notch lower if you can or raise your humidity will help give your leaves a thinner greener more luscious look
Also lower your nutes..tips be turning

No burn though
And again just my opinion

Click to expand...

I was gone for 3 days, during one of those days the person watching them thought they were to dry and watered them. And I transplanted them later that day I got back, so I had to water them again.. I didn't want to over water them, the one in that pic you were noticing that wasn't watered around the edges but the center was. That's because she doesn't have a big big root system I transplanted her super super early, when she was really young. I've been watering her a specific way because of that. For ex. First watering of the week I don't water the edges, second watering of the week I water edges to get her roots stretching slowly. This is something I took into my own liberty, it may be wrong.. But I noticed her pot staying to wet for too long, I didn't want any rooting problems ya know?

I did notice when I transplanted them that one or 2 had green stained perlite it looked like. If that helps?

qwizoking said:

Spring water can have a very high ph.......
"Well there's your problem" lol
If you have a ph tester why weren't you using it?

Click to expand...

I used it one yesterday and the ph was higher then 7 slightly, I didn't think it was going to be that reliable for the ph tester.
I know spring water is bad, all I had at that time :/