ILGM Auto NL Indoor Grow (COVID-19 era)

Day 22 - First day of Week 4! Just kind of waiting at this point. I feel like the setup is okay as-is. The Blumat digital moisture meter read 88 and that pot (Plant 1) seems the heaviest/wettest of the seven. Water reservoir feeding the Blumat tropf carrots contains tap water that seems fairly stable now with pH of ~6. More to come... Gonna play RDR2 then go to bed! Day 23 (April 17) - Bird_of_preys_comeback made a comment last week that included the suggestion I provide readers lots of detail about my setup so people can give better advice. So, here goes: Seeds are autoflower northern lights from ILGM. Using their recommended method I dropped them in tap water (five I'd explicitly ordered, on March 24th, and two I figured out were extra, on March 25th.) They'd all germinated by March 26th and that day they were planted into 3-gallon fabric grow pots, each filled almost to the top with a homemade mixing of (non-fertilized) perlite, coco coir, and Coast of Maine Stonington Blend. On top of that I put about an inch or so of Coast of Maine Seed Starter. I lowered the light to keep them warm and misted and loosely covered with plastic wrap. All seven plants had cotyledon by March 29th. I watered with just tap water for a while. I wanted to use Blumat Tropf for on-demand watering and instead of buying their more-expensive water pressure reducer tried all sorts of workarounds that didn't work. Tubing kept popping off connectors. Eventually got the Blumat brand water pressure reducer and connections remained secure with that. Growth seemed decent but the colors seemed somewhat mottled. I have a cheap digital TDS/EC meter and a cheap digital pH meter from years ago but haven't tried using them this grow. I used pH drops that come with GH pH up/down and tested my tap water and it seemed easily above 8.5! That was disappointing after all that effort to hook it up to the tap. With living soil (not sure if my mixture counts as truly living/super soil anyway) the pH of the water isn't supposed to matter as much but I opted to switch to a reservoir of pH'd water. That's been my water source for the Blumat Tropfs. No nutrients added, pH'd to about 6. Just yesterday (Day 22) I think I've got the Blumat Tropfs dialed in correctly. The Blumat digital moisture meter read 88 which is fine from what I've read. I'm growing in a Mars Hydro 5x5 tent. Light is SpiderFarmer SF-4000 which rates coverage during veg as 6x6 and flower as 5x5. Light schedule has been 24/0 for now. Plan is to switch to 18/6 or 20/4 during flowering. Distance from top of plants has varied with no strict method from ~12 inches to ~18 inches. The light has a dimmer but you have to unscrew the ballasts to use it and I haven't done that. So I think it's 100% intensity, whatever the factory-setting is. The specs for this light include watts from wall of ~450 and efficiency of 2.7 uMol/Joule. On Day 14 I topped two of them to see if that made much of a difference compared to the rest. During Week 3 I've been trying to LST them all but it doesn't look like the pics on websites, maybe because the plants have been so compact? That's why I raised the lights a couple of days ago to ~18 inches. I know distance is exponentially related to light intensity but maybe they need to stretch more? Or should I be happy the plant is so compact? I've read different things about whether defoliation is worthwhile. Information out there is contradictory. Some sources say every leaf is important during flowering because the plant uses the stored energy/nutrients to build buds/flowers. Most sources say opening up bud sites to light and air improves yield but it makes more sense and a few sources say bud sites can't absorb light energy. Any advice based on the above? Any other questions about the setup or other details needed to provide good feedback? I'll keep updating.... I appreciate your interest! Day 24 (April 18) - Just a quick check and Plant 1 now too wet! Digital moisture meter read 28. This morning is was 290!!! I guess I've got to make more refined adjustments. One other plant seemed fairly heavy (also too wet?) while the other ones seemed fairly light. They looked healthier, too. I dialed back the two too-wet ones, which look droopy/wilted. Water reservoir will need topped up tomorrow. pH this evening was ~6.5. Did some more LST.... Day 25 (April 19) - Plants look wilty! The digital moisture meter reads 91 which is a good number. The other pots are mostly drier than that so I don't think they're overwatered. Water reservoir given another couple of gallons of water, maybe 3-4 gallons total. I added 2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) each of GH Micro, Grow, and Bloom and pH was 6.0. I ordered Recharge awhile ago and it arrived a couple of days ago. I sprinkled maybe a tsp into my reservoir and stirred it up a lot. Hopefully it won't clog the Blumat lines. For those who don't know, it's meant to help boost the microbiome of the soil and is a very fine powder, almost as fine as talc. I feel like I'm just throwing shit at the plants because it feels good to do SOMETHING, which I know isn't a good strategy. I'm considering giving up on Blumat Tropfs, pulling them, letting soil of all the plants get pretty dry then just hand water every couple/few days when it seems it's needed. I assume the problem has to do with water. The only other environmental change was raising the lights about six inches to 18 inches from top of plants. Thoughts? Day 25 (early evening) - Took out the Blumat Tropfs and dug my fingers into the first inch or two of the soil and loosened things up. Except for the small area irrigated by the 3 mm tubing connected to the carrots the soil was pretty dry, even on the heaviest two pots. I sprinkled a bit of recharge on the top of the soil of all the plants and watered them all until reasonably heavy, making sure to get water all around the plant. No water came out the bottom of the fabric pots and with fabric pots and the dryness of most of the dirt I really don't think they were overwatered. We'll see, I guess. If they're worse in a couple hours then maybe I have given too much water. I' hoping they'll look soooo much better and then so will I! If they look better I'll take some after-pics. Oh! And I took off the soft wires I'd been using for LST. I don't want any reason to disturb these plants. I'd rather have lower yield than stressed, stunted plants that may not survive until harvest. Day 26 - This morning they hadn’t perked up but don’t look worse. Maybe the problem is heat stress? I changed the fan settings to try to keep the high temp below 72 and opened the flaps more at the bottom of the tent. I can’t think of what else to do. I’ll try to not fuss with them for a few days unless they show more signs of stress. I’m worried about these plants making it to bloom now let alone harvest. Day 26 (4/20!) - Later evening, I checked on them and they again don't look worse. Took pics at this time. Maybe some recent growth at the tops of the plants. The digital moisture meter was ~230 even though the pot looked watered and was not light when picking up. My 3rd Grow Question about this stuff has one answer, by mrpink. Answer was water pH was too low. I'd wanted it slightly lower since the first days I'd watered with high pH water. I don't have run off to measure pH from the soil but I could take some soil samples and swirl in distilled water then filter the water and check that for pH? Does pH testing solution go bad? If the pH of the water has been too low too long I could just water with tap water and see how they do. Trying not to make too many changes too soon though so will hold off at least until tomorrow or the next day. If you've read this far, I appreciate it! Feedback very welcome! Days 27 and 28 - Basically just let them be. Took some pics.