Hey Ganjamon5,
Well I'm a total newbie but I'll be glad to help, makes me feel more experienced anyway!
As far as light cycles, I'm going with 24 hours on until I get to the flowering stage them I'm switching to 12/12 until finished.
My concern at this point, actually, is that I might not have quite enough light. I'm using 4 - 4 foot High Output Fluorescents, and at 5000 lumens each that gives me a toal of 20,000 lumens, which I hope will be enough. I intended to have only one plant at first, but it looks like I've ended up with two.
My grow tent is 4 feet x 4 feet x 6.5 feet. I have a plastic shelf in there to hold stuff, and the plants will be about a foot off the ground so I can collect the run off from watering, and then I loose about a foot from the ceiling for the lights to hang, and considering the pot they'll be in, the plants will have about a 3 foot x 4 foot x 4 foot area (give or take a little) to grow in.
Since the lights are so long, they're hanging in a tee pee type fashion, which may be wrong, but this is my first grow, and I bought the 4 ft. HO lights at first thinking I'd get the most bang for the buck, and I ended up hanging them that way thinking I'd be able to bathe the plants in the 20,000 lumens of light, once I discovered they may actually be too long. But I'm growing mostly Indica plants, and if they end up being Christmas Tree like, then at least I'll have the light coverage.
I'm sure I'm making and will make some mistakes, but each successive grow will be better, I'm sure.
