leaves with holes and curling

growing in FFHF with Dr Earth amendments. fed everything over 10 days ago, i've been watering everyday about 500ml. i'm using ES 300 lights and i suspect that this new leaff damage is due to too much light stress. i just raised the lights about 6" and turned back the intensity. I was at 100% but now i'm down to about 70% as of this morning. i have four plants, and only one of them (the tallest) is showing this issue. i'm in first week of flower so i dialed up the light. is there a better way to provide the correct amount of light - should i have gradually increased it? during veg it was 32" away and at about 50%. once flowering started i increased the intensity but didn't raise the lights. (plant in question is at the top of this photo)

That looks like bug pest damage to me. Inspect the undersides of the leaves closely.

Tracker said:

That looks like bug pest damage to me. Inspect the undersides of the leaves closely.

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the only bugs in the space are fungus gnats. i treated with microbe lift last week, 6 drops per gallon and then really soaked each plant with about a quart of water. i don't see any bugs on the underside of the leaves.

I would place blue and yellow sticky traps in your growspace. My grow had thrips, but I didn't see them because they are hard to see with the naked eye. Not saying definitively that your grow is infested with thrips, but sticky traps made it easy to detect them.

Definitely bugs. Thrips? Yellow sticky tracks to hopefully catch and confirm. Top coat your soil with a layer of diatomaceous earth keep dry for 3-5 days should wipe out what ever larva is in the soil.

It doesn't look like thrip damage to me, but something is eating them. Get a scope, look at the leaves, all of them. It's gotta be some kind of insect damage.

Along with insect damage, it looks like there may be too much Nitrogen.

i have had sticky traps in there since day 3, only see gnats on them. i'll go check again, but i went over them pretty thoroughly yesterday and didn't see any bugs other than gnats, and the microbe lift has helped tremendously with those. i have a few bags of DE here so i'll go ahead and treat with that as well.