Well if you are going to stick with this strain your chop time is a bit of a learning curve for the first couple crops because different strains mature at different rates BUT if you want you can go by your trichs with a magnifying glass or jewelers loupe and start your flush when you see the first couple cloudy trichs show up. This will give you time during the flush for the rest of the trichs to cloud up. And if you have to chop when you haven't seen any amber yet that will still be ok cause at lease they should all be cloudy by chop time.
It also depends on what kind of a high you want from your meds. If you want more head high or more body couch etc..
Also you can take close up pics of your calix's too and watch as they swell and the hairs tuck back into the calix's that is a sign they are really mature and ready to chop soon. So watch as they swell. At that point your trichs will start to cloud up.
If you think your strain is only an 8 weeker then you should start to flush soon but to me those buds still look like they are going to swell quite a bit more for a couple weeks.
It's tough to make the call without being there. With hydro you can flush them really quick and well compared to soil. So with hydro you can be pretty confident to extend your feeding longer than in soil.
Make sure you use a clearing solution not just water. I use Final Phase and love it but there are a few others out there.
My buddies that grow hydro use RW for their clones. It's a bit tricky to find the right moisture level for the RW while they root. You want the RW to dry out a bit before soaking again and you can raise the RW cubes off of the base of a tray a bit with little home made ABS pipe rings then add a skim of water to the tray so that the clones "sense" the water below them and will grow roots quicker to reach that water a half inch below the cubes. We used two trays. One solid bottom one with a skim of water in it and with the ABS rings in it, then another tray with open square holes in it to put the RW cubes on.
Not sure if you get what I mean but I used to produce clones in RW so that's how we did it with good success.
Not familiar with the pondzyme but I am with Hygrozyme and it's great.
Great to do those experiments with the training and topping. Make sure you harvest each one independantly and compare each ones yield to the others. This is the kind of thing that seperates the good growers who get better as they go. They experiment and learn quickly from their own trials and errors. Reading stuff on the net and books is good but it isn't worth near as much as learning from experiance. If I didn't try things on my own and think out of the box on my own I wouldn't have excelled the way I did at all. I would be stuck doing the same old things like other people not advancing in their passions.
There's only two kinds of people in this world. People that watch things happen; and people that make things happen.
By the way; your grow space looks very clean and that is super important to man.
Congrats again and keep it up man!
This is similar to the "open" types of trays we put our RW cubes on above the other solid bottom tray with the water and rings on. But you can use any kind of tray that makes the cubes not sit in water but rather makes the roots reach for water.