First time grower

tl;dr
growing maui wowie and commodore
hydro grow with fox farm nutes in 50-50 perlite-vermiculite
3x4 scrog with 600w hps in 3.5 gallon buckets
pretty sweat grow "room" potential that i'll be documenting along side the grow

So i've read tons of post on here and figured i would start my own journal. Hopefully someone won't screw up whatever i do, and hopefully someone will tell me how to fix it. This is my first grow ever. Going to do a hydro grow with foxfarms nutes in a roughly 50-50 mix of perlite and vermiculite. have two maui wowie clones and two commodore clones to use as moms for the first run.

built myself a ~2X4 box to hold the moms and the cloning bucket. will eventually have 6 2' T5s hanging from chains but only has three right now (HD had them for like $25 but only had three when i was there last time), have a question about those: what is a good type of wire to use on these? I'm using 12-3 and it is so stiff that it is causing me problems when i move the lights up and down. I would love to use the low wattage wire like they use in landscape lighting but I'm not sure whether it can handle the load or not.

I'm going to section off a ~8x8 corner of a friends garage that is willing to rent the space to me (I have a medical card and am "allowed" to grow up to 40 plants). Going to do it with the black and white plastic so should have two layers of light protection (and thermal since I live in Colorado). I will have the cloning/mom box, two 4x4 grow boxes, and something for drying inside. Going to start slow though and just do one grow box this time. The area has an abandoned chimney that I'm going to vent out of and has both 120 and 240 lines run to it (not hooked up to the breakers yet). I have 15 amp breakers for both lines, opinions on whether that will be enough? mainly a question about the 120 since the 240 will only have the lights. I'm going to have an 8" fan and will be building a carbon filter that will pull all of the air from the boxes through carbon before being vented out the old chimney.

Going to be building a 3x5 box with a 3x4 screen (will a piece of chain link fence work?), small floor fan, 16 3.5 gallon buckets (might only do 8-10 plants on this run), 600w HPS grow light, and inlet and outlet ducting. Using the fox farm nuts, had another type too but they got lost in shipping so meh.

questions recap:
-is there a better wire to use/better way to wire so that the stiffness doesn't cause issues when raising and lowering the fixtures? (to anyone who answers "use a less stiff wire": no shit)
-is 15 amps reasonable for a grow room, not including the lamps? (fans, couple T5's for clones, etc)
-is a piece of chain link an acceptable scrog screen?

also, any advice/critique/suggestion/opinions are welcome. THANKS!

these pics are of the set up right now, will post the ladies in a bit/tomorrow early. Any feed

 

for starters, the strain is comandante, not commodore or whatever i called it (facealm)

It's crazy cold out this week so I'm keeping the girls inside under the halogens that light the kitchen counters. It's just for a day or two so i'm hoping it doesn't cause any probelms

maui on the left (first pic) comandante on the right (second)

 

Ok, so it's been a busy few weeks. I had to keep my clones inside for longer than expected and when i did put them in their tent the temps dropped down to ~50 two nights. One strain seems to be having some trouble; both clones are wilting, getting spots on their leaves, and have a few leaves that are twisting. They had started to yellow a little bit so i gave them some nutes and think it might have been a little too much for them. I was worried they might have root rot but i transplanted them into their pots today and the roots seemed to be ok (no obvious rot, no dead ends). The wilting also might be from being too wet as i just had the coco pots sitting in water. I decided i would just give them a good rinse with clean water and not add any nutes for a few day and see if they come around.

Any advice?
I'm a little worried they aren't going to make it

 

So...
I started out by burning one strain (its starting to perk up a little now that they are on pure water or ~%25 nutes) and now have run into a pretty bad looking situation with the other strain. They are being fed by the same res so it's kind of interesting to see the night and day difference in how they react to the exact same environment. I had started noticing some yellowing leaves when i was dealing with the burning on the indicas, but now that i have cut the nute levels way down I am seeing serious yellowing and even brown spots on the sativas. I'm fairly sure this is manganese deficiency due to having a high ph in the res (might not have rinsed the medium well enough ). I brought the ph down to 5.9-6.1 range (from 7-7.5) and am going to keep doing a manual ebb and flow (lifting the res and setting back down) every few hours checking the PH each time until I'm satisfied that it's going to stay around 6.

But...
I did want to post pics to make sure i wasn't completely wrong and to, assuming I'm not, show others first timers what high ph looks like and warn them to rinse their medium before they use it.

 

I'm having a LOT of trouble keeping my ph down. it seems to be slowly getting less severe, but every time i check it (at least twice a day) it is too high. It started out being around 7.5 every time, but now it is down to the high 6 range. It is causing a lot of problems for me with potassium deficiency. Any advice? is it my medium?