nice advice Steveat.

I advised him to start over because, even if he puts the light closer, he will still have the problem of not having enough watts to cover all those 170 plants. It seems like he overlooked a lot of things and just winged the whole growing project. I personally think it is best if he just starts all over, rather then waste his time with weak plants that haven't had any proper lighting for multiple weeks. If he starts over with 10-20 plants, and adds a couple more powerful lights, then he will be much better off then trying to continue the mess that he started.

But that is just my personal opinion on the whole subject. I definitely like the alternative that you have given him though, that way he could still use all the plants that he has already grown.

it seems like he has some major problems that he has to fix regardless of whether he starts over or continues.

1) light is not close enough to plants - this is easy to fix, just put the lights that you have much closer to the plants, but not to the point it damages the plants.

2) too many plants - I would suggest to scale down significantly(10-20 plants), but if you want to keep all those plants, then you will need a LOT more lights and powerful ones.

3) not enough lights and watts - whether you keep 170 plants or scale down, the current lights that you have do not produce enough watts to grow marijuana optimally. so you have to get better and more powerful lights, or just a lot more lights with more watts.