I have cloned many times without a rooting hormone. I put them into jiffy pellets under a dome. Heat mat under the dome and your good to go. I have had 80%+ success rate just using water. Keep the humidity up in dome
CFL work fine for flowering, not as fast as HID's but they work and some people have great results. What watt are the cfls you are using? and for flowering use 2700k bulbs.
starting out with white spots, than yellowing leaves, than dieing? Sounds like you got some spidermites. Check the bottom side of your leaves for tiny black specs.
have you noticed any new growth? Did they have enough root mass to support the little guys when you transplanted? If they didnt have a good root mass you might still need to up that humidity.
You can take clones even in flowering.. But if you take a flowering clone you have to put it under 24 or 18/6 to revert it back to veg. It will take a little longer to root but it will still work.