First time growing. Indoor text 2.5’ x 2.5’ x 5’. I have 2 sour diesel autoflowers going each in 5 gallon planters. I geminated in water and on 4/1 they went into the 5 gallon planters. One of them is getting a third set of leaves. Light is 450 watt LED hanging about 2 feet over the plants. I spritz then twice a day and the last few days have been watering the soil. (A) Should I still be just spritzing them? Also (B) fertilizer and when to start it. I’m using MaxiGro and in flowing stage will use MaxiFlower. I THINK I’m not supposed to fertilizer until they’re several inches tall (8?). Also (C) at what stage do I add a fan to strengthen the stalk? My home water is within good pH. I pH tested my soul before potting so I’m good there. Thanks in advance.
Welcome to the forums. Lots of people will help you here. Have fun through your experience I wish you the best grow 
Thank you for you vote of confidence. These are ILGM seeds. I’m really not good about the science of everything. In one pot I used Fox Farm Happy Frog Potting soil, the other I used a regular potting soil that I added perlite to. I have a pH and TDS meter. I grasp the pH meter. The TDS I’m clueless what it does, what it should read.
Welcome to ILGM forum. Shouldn’t need to spritz. Just go slow on. Water lightly around plant. Looks like that’s what you’ve been doing. 
I just saw while I was responding that you are using happy frog soil, that was going to be my next question. You shouldn’t need to add fertilizer for a couple of weeks. I haven’t used happy frog so I’m not sure about when exactly you should start. Make sure you are PHing water going in. You want it to be 6.5 and no higher than 6.8 . The TDS meter will be to measure ppm’s of water going in once you start adding nutrients. Also to measure water coming out in runoff once you get a little further along.
Thank you for your reply Bulldognuts. My tap (well) water is at 6.3 pH which I thought was okay. What would be an acceptable TDS level? The TDS meter gives me ppm and “EC”, whatever that is
Welcome to a great forum. Your TDS is total dissolved solids. Mix your nutes up and take a note of the number. On my meter that’s around 1000. Some like more some like less. When you pour it in the the top let a little appear in the saucer at the bottom and measure it again, the number should be less. That’s what your lady has taken for herself. Enjoy your grow and don’t feed anything yet, your babies will tell you when they’re hungry. As you water measure in your saucer and check the values, you will see it start to drop as they use the goodies up that’s in the soil. That number will drop right down to near zero as your soil is depleted
Many thanks. That is helpful.
6.3 is acceptable but I know that you will run the risk of it slowly getting lower in soil. EC is just another form of doing the same thing as TDS. My meter doesn’t have EC so I’m not familiar with it. Also as far as fan I don’t start my fan on seedlings until they get a little more growth. Some growers will. I can’t stress enough not to over water. Root system is barely established at this point. So make sure to water in circular pattern around plant so roots have to search for water.
Here is a link to another post that has some great answers to the same type of question.
Just for future reference if you want to get someone’s attention just type @ symbol and their screen name with no spaces and they will get a notification. Like this.
@MicheleE
Perfect info
One more thing then I will leave you alone. I’m more or less a beginner myself. I just finished my third grow not sure if that qualifies me as a beginner or not. But I like to encourage new members to start a grow journal. There are many advantages to having one. It will allow you to keep a record of your grow. Also when you have questions you will have one place to ask and get answers. It also allows other people to follow along and give advice. I started one on my most recent grow, which was my 3rd and I learned more by having a journal than my first 2 grows combined. 
@Bulldognuts I greatly appreciate the info. I’m still confused by TDS and how that gets adjusted. So I check my tap water TDS level and then after a good watering (when she’s bigger of course, she’s just slil newborn now) I check TDS overflow off the bottom. And I guess i check both TDS and pH levels before watering and after but TDS only if I’m adding nutrients?
When you start watering with nutrients it’s important to know if they really need them or not. Your water from the tap will have what’s called total dissolved solids. They are measured parts per million. Like my tap water comes out at 350 ppm’s. So when I’m measuring my nutrients and let’s say I want feed at 1000 ppm’s, it’s important to know that you are not going over 1000 ppm reading on meter. When plants get further in veg you’ll start watering enough to get some runoff out of bottom of pot and then you would want take readings on runoff if it’s coming out at let’s say 1500 ppms then you’ll know that don’t need to be fed. So over the next couple of weeks just play around with meter and measure water you are going to be using and get familiar with how meter works.
One thing that you should know also many people like to use water with the lowest ppm’s as possible. With tap or even well water everything in the water isn’t bad for your plants. Some of it is. The problem is you just won’t know what. Reverse Osmosis water which has extremely low ppm’s is something people will use so they know exactly what’s in the water. I’ve also used spring water from Walmart. It’s 80 cents per gallon. It’s not necessary to use low ppm water just trying to help you understand why it’s important to know what’s in your water.
Look at this chart, it is a nutrient feeding chart from Fox Farm, I know you may not be using these specific nutrients but this should help give you a bigger overall picture of how ppm is applied though out your grow layed out over 12 weeks. At the top is a blue header that shows the approximate ppm reading for what week you are in. Now don’t take these numbers literal to the decimal. Its more a guide to help you navigate as you watch them grow.
Growing the same strain a few times to harvest you will become familiar with that plant. They literally have their own personalities. So I would recommend taking clones before you throw her into flower so you can flower the same girl a few times and kind of hone your skills on your first few grows so each grow isn’t drastically different. I just want to say also I am a beginner and also along with @Bulldognuts on my third grow. I am beginning to harvest 12 girls that started flower on Feb 5th. I have a journal that shows the progress if you would like to see. I started with 5 plants on my first grow. Threw them into flower and found out 3 of the 5 were males. So I only grew two from seed to harvest. The next grow I grew four different strains and cloned each of them x6. That grow came out pretty nice, now I got about 18 girls going in flower and have set up a perpetual grow to where I am trying to harvest every 30 days
Welome to the forum…
You’ve gotten some good advice. Let me clarify EC/TDS (or make it MORE difficult haha)
PPM comes in two scales: US=500 scale or NACL scale. Canada and UK use 700 scale (potassium chloride IIRC) and EC is a direct number out of the meter.
In the NACL scale 500 ppm equals 1.0 EC. So 1,000 ppm equals 2. Obviously the UK scale 700 ppm equals 1 EC.
Looking at that FF schedule posted above you need to know that it’s 700 scale so numbers will be higher. If you mix nutes to your 500 scale to that value you will over feed and burn plants.
It would be a good idea to check the TDS of your tap water and ideally get a water report from the city to see if chloramines are used. If so you will need to either treat the water with a pond chlorine remover or condition your water through R/O and deionizing the water.
Your EC reads in micro siemens so you’d move the decimal point three spaces to the left. So your EC is .08. Not a lot of electrical conductivity due to there not being many ppms in your water. Here is a conversion chart for ppm/ec. Looks like your meter is going to be in the hanna column (500 scale).
@Myfriendis410 we have well water. I tested it and posted a pic in the images above. All this science is way over my head. 80 EC/40 ppm. Whatever that means