some questions from beginner...

hey all, dont post too much but have been lurking for last few months but anyway, recently i started my first grow ,started 11/07 (51days ago), from seed and sorted out 6 females to grow under a 400w metal halid lamp@18/6, and today i flipped em to the 12/12 hps, heres a pic of the setup below, they stretched a bit but are now about 1 foot away from the light.

so when i flipped em the tallest plant being about 2feet 8inches and the shortest being 1foot 6inches. they have about 8 to 10 nodes each, my question is: during veging ive heard they'll grow an inch a day, that means alot of pruning ,which i dont like the sound of, or bending the fan leaves some how, whats a good tactic on doing that?
also the nutes we got (bc bloom 3part thing) are for hydro and i am obviously are using soil but have been doing the water,water,nute, repeat cycle and have not noticed much of a difference, am i watering too much? has anyone else used hydro nutes in soil to some success?

hopefully the next few weeks will be interesting.

Well... i'm a little confused. Why would you want to know how much they will grow in vegging if you have already started flowering? It looks like you have a couple of different strain there. You may want to look at LST in FAQ upper left hand corner of this page second button.
You didn't really say what your watering schedule is so its kind hard to answer that one, if those aren't fake pictures what your doing must be working, the plants are growing.
I think what you are going to experience is slow above ground growth while the roots fill the 5 gallon pots you have. VV

sry posted right after toking, meant to ask how much will they grow during flower?
Ive been watering about every other day.

I did look into LST a little but in the faq it seems they all do it while vegging and while the plant is 5 or 6 nodes high. is it possible to still use LST to great effect if plants are 8 or up to 11 nodes high? Or even if the plants have entered flowering?
I'll post some new pics soon.

here's a few more pics taken tonight, also have some questions if anyone can help me out...

alot of the fan leaves are blocking the light from reaching the bottom nodes, the hps light penetrates alot less than my mh, i did move the light closer but i would still like more light to get to those nodes, is bending these leaves down somehow better than cutting them off? i dont like the idea of cutting them, but i'm not sure about the best way to bend them out of the way, and a few leaves are beginning to yellow.

also as you can see in the pics, we have 2 plants that are about 1 foot shorter than the others, since this is my first grow i would like to grow them as naturally as possible but would like to try to LST the smaller ones but would still like to know, is it a good idea to BEGIN this at the beginning of the flowering phase? the tuts i've seen on it look like they start a few weeks into veg. and when they are half as big as mine.

so if anyone could offer some advice about these questions or any from my original post, it would be appreciated.

thanks,