Day 5 into flowering

Hey guys,
I'm at day 5 into flowering my 1st plant (she is a Cinderella 99).
Just a couple of questions:

1. I'm not seeing anything that might look like the beginning of buds. However, she is shooting out a ton of new fresh leaves from almost every branch. Is this normal?

2. The new branches of leaves kinda look weird - they are have these vertical stripes of dark on bright. It looks cool, but does that mean anything?

3. Some of the new branches are a bid red-ish. Is that a bad sign? How do I fix it?

4. The growroom I'm using is DarkRoom. It's sweet, but I have to keep a little hole for air to come in, otherwise the fans will suffocate and die. Is it very harmful that a wee bit of light seeps in?

Sorry I can't bring in pictures, she's sleeping right now.

Thanks!

For the first two weeks of flower you will see substantial growth and stretch but not to many flowers - they come a bit later. Some redness in the stems is ok, if the entire stem is turning dark red then you might have a nutrient deficiency, or more likely a lockout due to pH or too many nutes.

Light leaks are bad! You want no light during the off period of 12/12. A simple solution is to put some ducting on the end of your fan and then bending it into a U shape - air can still get out but light has a hard time getting around the bend.

Gastanker said:

For the first two weeks of flower you will see substantial growth and stretch but not to many flowers - they come a bit later. Some redness in the stems is ok, if the entire stem is turning dark red then you might have a nutrient deficiency, or more likely a lockout due to pH or too many nutes.

Light leaks are bad! You want no light during the off period of 12/12. A simple solution is to put some ducting on the end of your fan and then bending it into a U shape - air can still get out but light has a hard time getting around the bend.

Click to expand...

Thanks man. I think I came up with a sweet solution for the light leaks - in my growroom I put an empty toilet paper roll in the hole where the air should come in, tightened the noose around it and put a black sock on it. Now air can still come into the room, but the black sock filters the light.

Is it really bad that I had light leaks in the past 5 days?
Also, any idea for how I can deal with the smell without buying expensive carbon filters?

From my experience you need an expensive carbon filter. I tried odor eliminating CFLs and a DIY carbon filter but neither really cut it. You can find small carbon filters for ~$50, it's not too bad.

A small light leak for 5 days at the very beginning of flower shouldn't be too bad. I wouldn't worry about it.

Thanks bro. Do you think I still need it with just one (large) plant?

By the way, any idea how many buds I'm expecting to harvest? My baby is 3 feet long now (almost 1 week into flowering) and has about 13-14 nodes.