lack of oxygen..? dont you mean CO2? plants dont need oxygen. im telling you dude, get rid of those see through cups.
droopy leaves can be either over or underwatering. start watering more, see if it gets worse. if it does, then dont water so much.
hope this helps
Duece.
Hey Pea, I appreciate you staying frequent with my thread. I wanted to respond to the topic of light exposure to root systems earlier but I had forgotten. I completely understand the idea that root systems, especially early on, can be fragile and delicate, and that widely it's believed that light exposure can be detrimental to them, however as of late there have been a number of arguments on the other side of the fence saying that any negative effects of light exposure to early root systems is negligible at best. Many people are now using clear pots/cups during the early stages of plant growth so they can easily monitor root growth and they're not reporting any significant damage. If you're like me and got started by reading Widowmaker's How To Grow tutorial stickied on the top of the newbie's corner, you'll have noticed that he to uses clear plastic cups for his initial pot without repercussions. Now the plan was to transplant the seedlings to opaque actual 4 gallon pots in about a week or less so that will resolve any issue that may or may not exist pertaining to the exposed roots, but as this is my first grow I'm really quite glad that I'm using the clear plastic cups because it really is quite neat to see how the roots are sprawling through the soil and covering much of wall surface of the cup.
Anyways I stopped by Wal-Mart after work and picked up a big bag of perlite. I'm going to mix a 80% fox farms 20 % perlite soil mix in the 4 gallon pots and prep them for transplant. If the droopiness gets any worse tomorrow I'll transplant them at that time.
Regarding a plant's need for oxygen, while they do use CO2 quite heavily, the roots of the plant also require oxygen to breath. Bare in mind CO2 is 2 parts oxygen and oxygen is a diatomic molecule meaning that oxygen is rarely found with just one atom but usually as a molecule of 2 atoms of oxygen bonded together. The air we breathe is actually a giant mix of oxygen nitrogen and other assorted gases found in our atmosphere. The roots need that oxygen however to help facilitate root and plant growth. If the roots were tightly packed in soil which didn't allow much ventilation or aeration, it could suffocate the roots which would ultimately end in the plant's death. Because of how poorly cut the drainage/aeration holes are, I think my roots might be suffering from an oxygen deficiency and while it may or may not be the cause of my leaves' curling, it's a problem that one would definitely want to clear up to steer clear of bigger problems down the road.
So anyways I think I might try as you suggested and water more to see if the problem gets worse or better, however I'm leaning towards it being over-watering because the moisture meter I bought is reading very high levels of moisture about 2-3 inches deep, however with my large lighting setup and its 1 inch proximity to the plants, I can understand why the top level of the soil drys up so quickly. To try to combat that I've been misting the plants 2 or 3 times a day. With that said though I'm pretty confident the plants have been getting enough water (1/4 liter for each plant residing in a 16 oz cup.)
Now that I've been able to present you with a little more information hopefully there's a more clear picture painted for you. Thanks for reading and stay tuned as I'll be updating at least once a day.
