New grower - Need some advice please

[Fireguy]

thanks for reading my post. I would love to find a couple decent people to give great advice on a number of issues i have.
1. I have an auto flower entering into the flowering stage. my concern is that up until now i have ran with 24/0 veg led. i have read differing opinions on the next stage. some say leave it, some say switch to 12-0 veg and bloom, some say 18-6 in veg is enough. please advise. the auto is skunk #1
2. I read that the best way to clone is to clone from the bottom. my first attempt i cloned from all over and seemed to do the best with cloning my top on an unknown. i also had zero success cloning the auto. i cloned straight into coco, but graduating up to cloning with an air stone and tap water ph'ed to around 5.8 I'm curious peoples thoughts.
3. is it better to keep a mother and flower the clones, or take a clone,and once it is secure...flower the mother?
ill start with that. please offer sound advice and i will gladly add in pics tomorrow or as needed.
i also would love to get some idea based on size, color, shape...etc of what my unknown might be. i know...there are 1000's of strains...but any help is well...help

 

[AnimaSola]

24/0 is fine for autoflowers, some say 20/4 or 18/6 is better. You cant clone an auto and keep it for a mother.

 

[Fireguy]

thank you for responding. i tried to clone the auto and had no luck. i am ok with that. i have 5 bag seeds that i am growing that have become bushes and thats what i was asking about keeping clones and flowering mothers, or flowering clones and keeping mothers. all are about 3 months old.
also i was asking on the24-0 veg only or veg and bloom.

 

[AnimaSola]

I clone clones and clones of clones of clones, they are all genetic copies of the mother so you could clip clones from the mom and flower them or flower the mother and veg out the clones more. The sooner you put it into fliwer the less you will get, a mother with well established roots will yield more than a fresh clone.
24/0 is fine for autos from start to finish if you can afford to run the lights, the more time to soak in light the better for autos. Some people say autos benefit from a dark period but I've never noticed a difference.