My first grow! DRWC setup. Looking too bushy?

I have a 5x5 tent with a 650 scorpion Diablo. I took me a while to figure out how to go from germination to seedling. Had to start over on a couple of the girls as you can see they are a couple weeks behind their older sisters. Big ones are 3 weeks old and babies are 1 week. I topped the older ones a few days ago to try to let the babies catch up to height. I’m getting crazy branch growth now. Have the environmental pretty dialed in I think. Just started stepping up nutes to about 500 ppm with a baseline of 175 well water using general hydro trio. Adding hydro tone and calmag too. Should I be defoliating then larger ones?. The nodes are so tight it crazy. I recently raised the light to 30-36 inches to promote some stretching but it’s not making a noticeable difference. I am running at 40% power starting this week from 25%. Want to make sure they aren’t too small and bushy and if I need to pull some leaves or not. Also should I be topping more than once ? I’ll be installing trellis nets in a couple weeks for training when they grow a bit. Any ideas how much longer to start flowering? Check out pics. Comments appreciated!

Can't speak to the hydro side, but do consider using something like Photone to rough in your lights' DLI/PPFD better than just HLG general grow guidelines. I hit my last batch with too much intensity and similarly didn't have enough internodal space to be able to play with 'em much. Once I started actually gauging the lights, things got better.

Also, if you're finding that your ~175ppm well water is being burdensome, note that GH makes a Flora Micro "hard water" that they suggest for over 200ppm but you're pretty close to that range. I use well water that's in the ~220ppm and moved to it and find it easier to handle.

thank you. I will give it them a try!! I’ll post weekly updates.