My EC/TDS meter got here sooner than expected, so I calibrated it and tested the runoff. Runoff from the first time after I fed them was 4.2 EC, no surprise they got burned from that; runoff from after flushing was 2.4. That still seems high for such small plants, from what I’ve read I’m shooting for about 1-1.5. Plucked the dead/dying sun leaves, dumped the runoff since it smelled like the molasses was starting to ferment anyway, put clean water in the bottom of the tray and LITFA other than taking pics for a week or two. They’ll survive, tough to see it from this pic but the new growth on top is coming in green and shaped normally.
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good luck bringing them back around! you can do it!
nothing like an early stress test to see how they handle it.
they are testers after all.
i can kinda see what you’re talking about with the green growth on the talller one. they’ll bounce back no problem.
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Btw, I should have clarified on this. They did read at 30% before the most recent fiasco; but they were also overwatered for a while, which is probably why both you and @Heliosphear saw signs of overwatering, because they were recently but not currently. I’ve managed to heap quite a lot of abuse on these, and they’re still standing, so hopefully all they need now is time…
The smaller one’s still looking very ugly, haven’t had new leaves fully emerge yet so there could still be hope for them to come in healthier. The larger one should eventually make it, just need to LITFA for a while. It’s hard when they look so miserable though. 
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I find, the more LITFA I apply to mine, the less issues I have. Soil also helps me LITFA, but when I was adding nutes it took a bit to figure it out because OF the soil.
I do find these plants are hard to kill, and thrive in many conditions (it is called weed isnt it?). But they always have one thing in common, which is consistency. Whether its water, nutes, light, as long as its consistent, they adapt (might not be the best yield per se). But when we introduce swings, high nutes, no nutes, wet > dry > wet, the plant stresses a bit to adapt, and adapt again…
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Yep. In retrospect, the best grows I’ve ever had were the ones where I was hardly paying attention and just kept coming around to water them regularly… I’m not sure I fed the Northern Lights more than once, and it might very well have been a mistake to do it even once, just not one that hurt too badly. With a runoff EC of over 4, I’m not sure how much good that tea is doing anyone. Might need to cut it with water to dilute the dose by 50-70% or so.
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My friend sorry to say they look sad
What soil mix are you using ?
They look like a combination of things lmho
Over watering = let them dry out
Flush to clean out Medium
Ph maybe off = check every time you water keep ph between 5.8 to 6 .2
Feeding = low and slow
Do you check ppms ? Feed between 300 to 500 ppms depending on water
Paps
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Generally I use two parts organic compost mix, two parts sand, one part peat and one part lava rock; this time I was starting up after a hiatus and just wanted to get something growing, so it’s that same soil mix reused after a previous grow. It might or might not have been flushed from the plant originally growing in it flowering there, it might or might not have been soil I overfed a plant in which is thus still too high in salts, it might or might not have been a complete faceplant. 
At this point they are definitely overwatered and looking sad, since I just gave them each a half gallon of compost tea 5 days ago; then 3 days ago I flushed them each with another quart and a half, then yesterday put another 3 quarts in the bottom of their runoff basin (after clearing out previous runoff and testing the EC, as detailed above) - that being said, I’m intending to LITFA and let them dry out. They’ve already been flushed once, the PH is slightly off at 6.8 and 7.0 but not terribly, and the PPM can also be expressed in EC - 300-500 PPM = 0.6-1.0 EC, according to the USA conversion standards. The EC on their runoff is currently at 0.6, so I intend to LITFA as I mentioned a few times earlier.
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Cool!
that’s mostly likely the best advice ! Just leave them be !
I see you’ve taken the proper steps to save the little ones
Good luck
Paps
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Back the light up, it’s the reason for your plant’s shortness. Those leaves are rolling down because the light is too close, this helps the plant deal with the nuclear brew you’ve made in the soil. Transplant them and they will recover more quickly, it will take a month for them to make you smile under the current conditions. The plant will recover in two weeks if you transplant, start 2-3 more seeds to keep you busy while you wait for recovery.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about… these two seedlings are 3 weeks old at the time pic was taken, rained heavily every day. They are Purple Moby D, one turned out male, the female was worth saving.
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I can back up the light, yeah, they certainly won’t be photosynthesizing much in this state anyway… already done in fact, just went and moved it from 15" to 24" away. Is 15" actually too close for the lights under normal circumstances? Keep in mind this is just a “2000W” blurple LED - i.e. actually about 300W draw for ~500W power. Either way, I’ll run it with the lights a bit further away for a while.
I was considering a transplant as well, but wasn’t sure how well they’d survive the extra stress and had a chorus of LITFAs coming at me. I need to make up new soil mix anyway before I could; and everyone else on here, as well as my growing partner, says to just leave them the hell alone already… because, after all’s said and done, every time I’ve tried to do something good for them it’s killed them just a little bit more. 
If I’m going to drive the final nail in the coffin, I’d like it to at least be for a different reason this time…
Obligatory pic, though there’s not much different. They definitely don’t look great, and wouldn’t be terribly surprised if the little one doesn’t make it either way. We shall see, I guess. LITFA scheduled for today, but I’ll go ahead and put together some fresh soil mix. We’ll need it eventually, and better to have it already made up than not.
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Your plants are dead if you don’t transplant, the soil is nuked, the pH will flux for weeks. The plants are consuming their own leaves to try and make new leaves. They are already so stressed transplant will be a relief.
research your light and how to use it.
Your light should have started out at 35+ inches away as it is most likely full spectrum. The combination of to much light, to much water and adding nutrients that the plant can’t use is heading for a complete disaster.
Clear the roots and check them out, take a picture and follow this thread for your transplant.
Everything that any OG like yourself does to help you directly is done voluntarily and it costs, personal time. I’ll check back next week and see how it’s going, be good to yourself.
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The soil is coming up at a 0.4 EC on a direct test. If anything, that’s depleted, not nuked, unless I’m seriously misunderstanding the measurements. I just calibrated it two days ago, so it should be accurate; and that matches fairly well with the EC of the runoff, which was at 0.6 when I tested earlier. The pH is down from 7.0 to 6.8, which is slightly high but not unreasonably so as I understand it. They’re definitely overwatered, no arguments there, but that’s the point of LITFA so they can dry out a bit.
The thread you linked appears to pretty universally condemn these lights as junk, which matches fairly well with my experience using them. The Wal-Mart link is empty, goes right to their home page. I did go back and refer to the manufacturer’s page on Amazon, where I bought these 3-4 years ago. They’re discontinued now, but the page is still there; amazon.com/gp/product/B075R61CNT
3-4’ is the manufacturer recommendation for seedlings on typical modern LEDs, yes; this manufacturer, who claims that these mimic 2000W of full-spectrum HID lighting, says that they should be kept 2’ away. They don’t mimic 2000W, btw. The manufacturer is based in China, and is clearly using the same accountant as Luckin Coffee. I’m also using a very limited grow space right now, which is the reason I threw testers on, the reason I re-used soil without testing it in the first place, the reason I wasn’t prepared with nutrient tests to start, etc. I simply can’t hang them 3’ away. The whole space is less than 4’ tall.
Thanks for your time, I know you and everyone else here are trying to help; I’m also being told two different things though, which is less than helpful in practice. Not blaming anyone, but I’m confused and going to go with the popular vote, which matches up with what my instruments are telling me. I’m going to LITFA and see what happens to these. If they die, c’est la vie; I’ll know you were right. 
I have more seeds on deck, waiting for space rather than seeds or even time at this point; and I don’t need a crop short-term, just would be nice to have something new. A complete disaster here, if it should come to pass, is not too disastrous for me unless it also follows the dissolution of the Fed and an 80% drop in the bond market.
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Understood and nuked means useless to me. I thought you were running low on all the exspencery buds you got and needed to get some clones going.
I do always recommend leave it the funk alone method after the situation has been remedied.
Best luck of the Irish to you and your plants.
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Nah, not at all running low, I’ve got months if not years of bud left. I’m more trying to find my footing as far as growing again, it’s been about a year; and I never was involved much in the early stages, my partner always took care of them from seed till a month or two into veg. I didn’t realize just how little he was doing until now, from just how much I’ve screwed things up trying to help them when they were doing well enough already. Clearly doing nothing is generally the right thing to do though, other than using fresh soil before they get to the point of being this unhealthy.
Once you get the hang of it and know your plants ( takes a couple rounds) you kind of get on auto pilot. I usually only have time to play with the plants every other day. Due to lighting and work schedules
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Another two days of LITFA, for a week total, has them looking very ready to die. I’m calling this before they do.
Clearly @Heliosphear is right, the bottom leaves have all eaten themselves; I’m hoping that a transplant now won’t be too little, too late. If they don’t start looking better soon, I’ll be starting up some fresh fems from a mystery pack to fill their spot. There’s still some signs of life, so I’ve reformulated and mixed up a fresh batch of soil. It’s 4 parts Bumper Crop, 1 part sand, 1 part peat and one part lava rock; I mixed up the previous formula and figured I’d test EC before putting them in, turns out it was 0.9 fresh. Not much better than the 0.6 when it was flushed… fairly sure that’s too low, and since the Bumper Crop alone tested at 2.1, I’m gonna try 2/3 this time rather than 2/5. Since they’re already in soil, I didn’t handle the roots at all and just dug them out along with some of the old soil. Watered it in fairly good so it’ll all mix up, and we’ll see how they do.
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What method are you using to test your EC? Just a runoff test?
Remember in soil a lot of those nutrients are locked up in the media and not directly soluble with just water.
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Basically a runoff test, yep; just mixing 1 part soil with 2 parts water and using the meter. It’s the best I have, though certainly not perfectly accurate. Before doing a larger-scale grow again, I’m going to look up the exact details on Bumper Crop and have it lab-tested if I somehow can’t find that info out there, then possibly reformulate again. Either way, I know others on here use similar soil mixes to Bumper Crop and have had successful grows with the pure soil, so I’m trying to keep it closer to pure this time. If these die, and the next ones I germinate end up getting burned, c’est la vie. There are more seeds, space and to a lesser extent time are my limiting factors right now.
Cool, that’s pretty similar to the saturated paste test I had run last time. My no-till bed has an EC of 0.8, but is loaded with nutrients when extracted with a weak acid (Mehlich III test).
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