Seeking advice from DWC growers on how to recover from a cabinet meltdown

To cut a long story short, in Sydney (Australia) we recently had a week of very intense rain that resulted in a leak inside my wall cavity shorting out a lighting circuit and needed me to call the landlord to get it sorted.

I had only completed my stealth grow cabinet 3 weeks earlier (thanks to all the lurking and information sponging I have done on this website over the past 6 months) and it was happily humming along in the garage on a completely separate circuit to the lighting but my wife insisted I quickly deconstruct my grow cabinet as it was in the garage right next to the main circut board and was freaking out that the landlord would discover my plans for overgrowing the world one garage at a time when came time to fix the short.

She was good enough to agree to me growing, so after a heart-wrenching couple of hours taking it apart and hiding it in the attic I was left with 5 x C99 seedlings in rockwool cubes just pushing out their 2nd set of true serrate leaves which I hid in the garden under sawn-off plastic softdrink bottles in the pouring rain.

ANYWAY...
The electrical issue was fixed and I started rebuilding my cabinet and germinated my remaining 5 x C99 seeds in rockwool cubes, anticipating I would need fresh ones after the ones in the garden died.
Those seeds in the garden must have had a real will to live as 4 of them survived (although growth was definitely stunted from the stress) and now I am stuck with 9 seedlings which is more than I can fit into my DWC netpots as it stands.

MY DILEMMA:
I was originally going to grow 5 seedlings in a 15gal DWC under 250W HPS take 2 clones from each and after sexing the original plants, discarding males and looking for ideal traits in the females, select two suitable clones to keep as mothers (and continue growing the remaining ones to get a little bit of a harvest).

My Question for DWC growers:
Now I have 9 seedlings and don't know whether I can squeeze them all into a 15gal DWC and take them far enough into Veg where I can take clones from them?

What would you do in my situation?

This is my first grow so am not sure how best to proceed.
Should I just choose the strongest 5 seedlings and throw the other 4 away and continue on with my original plan?

Quick Questions: Cabinet size? The size of the cabinet determines the limits of what can be done. Is it completely out of the question to put together another DWC? You mentioned clones to be mothers. They had to be destined to go somewhere else since they can't be in the stealth box- 18/6 (or 24) vs. 12/12 lighting, so there needs to be space somewhere we can rob- or else there can't be any mothers. Ideally, I'd make another DWC, then I'd grow all 9 in two DWC's, switch them to 12/12 when they're 1/4 to 1/3 my max size, kill the males, combine the 4 or 5 remaining into the cabinet into the single DWC.

Hey vhampyre and thanks for the reply.

I wish I had the extra space to make another DWC as you suggest but unfortunately I only have a measley 30cm x 50cm space set aside for the mothers and clones.
My cabinet size is maxxed out unfortunately due to space limitations. We could rob that space temporarily but then I would have nowhere to grow my clones.

I like your idea of switching to 12/12 early and so I think I will take the plunge and put all 9 seedlings into the one DWC tub and veg them until they are big enough to take a clone or two and then switch to 12/12 early and hopefully can consolidate the best 2 or 3 females to grow out in the DWC before roots become too entangled and before the clones are looking for a home in the flowering chamber.

Thanks again for your help vhampyre!

Grow as many as you can and sex them, flower them, decide which ones are fit for motherhood at harvest and put them aside. Harvest your crop. Harvest the to-be mothers but leave a few branches with some small buds then put them back on 18hr or 24hr light cycle. In 2-3 weeks you will see them revert to vegetative growth. Then you have a proven source for cloning, and the benefit of smaller bushy mothers. Good luck.

btw you can cut the roots back too.

Thanks for the suggestion hytymes.
I didn't realize you could revert back to veg after having flowered to the harvest stage.
Might try that as an experiment on a couple of plants but think I will still go ahead and veg all 9 seedlings and take the tops as clone candidates before switching to 12/12 so i can get some practice cloning while hopefully maybe getting a little bit of a harvest from the topped plants.

Thanks again mate.