My First Hydro Grow!

Hi guys, so happy to be part of this forum, I've introduced myself it the "introduce yourself" forum but I'd just like once again say that there are so many knowledgeable people in here, and I have grown my plant so far by reading a lot of your posts. So thank you for all the help so far.

Anyways, I had a few questions, and was hoping you guys could help me. I'm currently growing in an aerogarden with a few mods. The arm extends to 50 inches instead of 21 and I changed out the lights as to provide enough light for my plant. I also have an assortment of feminized seeds, including a lowrider which is what I planted since I have a limited amount of vertical space. I'm now at week 5 of my grow and the plant is just about to grow it's 6th pair of nodes. Also as of last week smaller nodes have begun growing from the main nodes which you can see in the main stem picture.

Now my questions are:
Is it normal that my plant is only at 10 inches high, eventhough its' horizontal growth is expanding so much everyday?

Does it look healthy? or does it look like there are any nutrient deficiencies?

And my most important question, Can I start flowering today? or should I wait longer for maximum yield? If I can start flowering, I've heard that the 12 hours of no light needs to be completely dark, does that include the room lights even for a few minutes? or do I need complete darkness?

Thank you guys for any input, and any answers you can give me. Have a high day!

oh and I've been running 18-6 light cycle until now..usually how long after you switch to 12 hour does the plant start flowering?

im super new and am going through my first hydro grow too, but i do believe the lowryder is an autoflowering plant which means it induces its own flowering over time not light cycle. Whatever website you bought your seeds from usually has generic info on what your plant characteristics are as well.

Unfortunately the seeds we're given to me by a buddy of mine. So it didn't come with any instructions. but i'll check out some of the seed sites and see if they have any info.

sry to bump up this thread. just really needed advice on wether to start flowering or not. i'm running out of room horizontally, should I be trimming excess growth in the fan leaves?

i dont think it autoflowers...any suggestions?

i started flowering on the day of the first post. and it's a beautiful baby girl. I've heard that hydro is faster than soil if that is the case, how long should the flowering take (a rough estimate, i know its hard to be precise) on my plant? I've heard in 4 weeks and I've heard 3 months...so where in between that is the closest guess?

btw, i can see the pistils growing and they are not completely white, they are very very light green with like a white coating on them..is this normal?

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also need some pruning help..in the first picture up there could anyone here give me some pruning tips? i want my bud sites to get the most light possible and i feel like there are too many big leaves blocking it. especially towards the bottom. where and how should i clip the nodes? or do i even need to?