Seedling Question?

[RockaBud20]

I just planted my seeds that I had popped on 3/10, It is now 3/13 and they still haven't got to the surface yet, this is my first time statring inside, I have them in a germination fizture, tyhat has 70 little planting holes, it comes with a heat pad to put underneath, and a dome over top to keep humidity higher.

Is this heat pad doing something wrong, or is it the dome, last year all my seeds I started outside I put some cling wrap aroundn the top and it worked fine. But it has almost been 3 days and see nothing yet, and I am getting worried, I didn't put any holes in the dome, because no instruction told me to do that, right now they are under 24 hours of light , under a 4 light Sublaze HO flouescent fixture, that is hanging about 3 inches above the dome. Any help would be great, i am getting nervous here.

Oh I did put them about 1 inch or a little more down i the dirt I believe, i relized I did this afterwards, when I read that its a little deeper than needed in another forum.

 

[Guest]

So you say they were germinated when planted correct?1 inch is a tad deep,if I saw nothing on day 4 i'd carefully remove some of the top layer to see whats up.A dome is totally unnecessary for seedlings,domes are to contain humidity and are only needed for cloning not seedplants.Unless its really cool a heat matt isnt necessary either,they should pop fine anywhere in the 70-85 degree range if they germinated.I like an 18/6 photocycle also,many times the plants will break ground during the dark hours I've noticed.Not necessary but something I like to do.Lighting is important for seedlings,I'm glad to hear you have one as many folks dont see the need.The reason you want light to pop them is without any light,they will stretch like hell when they pop up.After they break ground you want to get the light as close as possible to the top of the plant to reduce stretch.I use tube floro's and never have them further than 1/4 inch from the growtips.Give it 6 hours of dark this evening and see how many pop.On day 4 or 5 I'd definately start looking and removing the top layer of soil

 

[aeric]

agreed...give them another day or two...if they happen to be old or landrace tropical sativa they could take a bit longer also. Like BM said I would start diggin after that. Check to see that they didn't start growing the wrong direction.