1st time grower, 43 days as veg, bagseed

1st time grower here, just need some feedback, 43 days in veg, 5 gallon buckets,4 cfl light 2 sylvania gro-lux, 2 verilux , all 2' lights, i got nutes goin with no co2 generator. help me out guys =)
they are about 7 inches tall, should they be taller? i have good ventilation and an open window near by. no co2 enhancement yet. am i doing anything wrong?i have the light about 2-4 inches from the plants. im using miracle grow nutes, 8-7-6 at the moment with miracle grow potting soil which is 21-7-14. i water when the soil is dry, how can i check the soil in 5 gallon buckets without disturbing the soil so much? i just transplanted them from little pots about 2 days ago. any advice would be nice TY very much!!

here are some more pics.

id say jus stick your finger straight down into the soil. if its dry half the length of you finger then water.... prolly small cause of the miracle grow soil feedin them while they were so young, theyll grow tho, not a big problem. nice etnies btw. o n maybe keep the lights bout 4-6 inches away instead o two...

thanks for the feedback, i will try and move my lights. i hope the miracle grow soil doesnt hurt my babies. should i just use plain water since the soil has nutes?

Those are very small for 43 days. They look healthy, yet thin, and the nodes are way spread out. I've done a lot of flouro-vegging, and I'd say you want the light 3inches or closer to the plant at all times. Flouros work good but you want them really, really close. 1 and a half to 1 inch being even better.

If you want to keep using the flouros no prob, but get some of the CFLs and get some of the Y splitters to use two bulbs in one socket, and the put them as close as you can, and I mean CLOSE. i'd rather have a fast growing plant get a leaf burned from touching a flouro than deal with the stretched out, slow growing mess that is a flouro any further away than 3 inches.

If you got moms you can keep them healthy with the lights a lot further away, but when you are truly vegging plants to get them ready to flower get down close as hell.

yea idk why they so small, i just bought a bunch of tonic water for co2, so i hope this helps lol so ill try to keep them closer. 2 of the lights are white and the other 2 are purple for some reason, i wonder if that effects it. =(

i made my own hoods from tin and painted them flat white, should i not use them? i can only fit 2' lights in my veg room =/ another thing, i got the seeds from my first harvest that messed up somehow my female turned into a hermie by messing up the light cycles i think, if that makes a diff.