Progress?

Looks and sounds to me like you have nutrient lock in the plants. Get some FlouroKleen and use the directed amounts to flush everything for a few days. The start over with about 400 ppm of nutes and cal-mag combined.

Get some air flow from a fan on those babies and in about a week or so they are going to take off!

This sounds like the exact ph problems i was having. I vote that its a ph issue! If it isnt taking care of your plants may soon suffer the same fate as my 10PPP's,9 papaya's and 9 C99's! Yes I lost 28 seedlings to a ph problem and letting an inexperienced person watch over them.

Is it from pH fluctuations? too high pH, or too low?

I don't live near any hydroponic shops and really don't have money for florakleen..

Is there anything I could do besides using florakleen?

if you really can't afford flouro than just use distilled water with no additives/nutes.
When filling the rez, pour some over the hydroton to help flush what is still in your rooters.

The next few days your ph will go up slightly as the plants leach it all out. Then start to add your nutes slowly

Been saving up water for the reservoir change. 10 more gallons to go

In the meantime, I have shut off the water pump, and have been manually watering them with pH corrected water with no nutrients (in hopes in would reverse any potential nutrient lockout)



Here are some some shots.

These are taken 8 days after the pictures in the beginning of the post, 22 days after the seedling shot i posted later.



Are they growing guys, what do you think?
Let me know!!

yeah, they're growing. Now go back to really light nutes. Total ppm 600 or so. After a week go to 850 and so on. You'll be fine.

It looks like they're growing to me. You might try the same thing with your light as you do your nutes. Move it a little closer very gradually, until you see signs of heat stress, then move it back a notch and keep it that far away. I think I have my 600W that far away, but I'm using a cool tube and a small fan blowing up at the light.

The best way to tell is by measuring leaf temp with a laser thermometer, and keep it under 80. But there goes another $30-60.