Help for a Newbie trying to improve everything.

OK....I'm not a newbie...but I have only been doing this for a couple years.
And I have had really good results. I know I'm doing a ton of stuff wrong....or not so much wrong, but I know there is so much more I could be doing right.
I'm sure I'm wasting money in a number of areas. As in....running veg lights 24/7. Using 1000mh. And I think I could be using a lot smaller pots. Prob using too much nutes, but none of my plants show many signs of it.
I am sure my plants are getting too tall and I'm topping too late. Actually from what I've read I'm not topping. I'm timming. I have only topped them when I take cuttings. I had always kept the mother around for more clones. After a year or so I put it in the bud room. Of course it never did all that...it was weak and sparce and only produced 4oz or so.but that was still worth putting it through flowering.
But I have changed things when I started using new starts and needed to make a bunch of clones. After I took clones I let it veg for a couple more weeks and then I put it in bud room. And I now see the huge difference in canopy width. I now have 1 plant per light for the 4 plants I did that with. I have had 3 plants per 1000w hps and just kept rotating then to get more even coverage throughout the grow. With the overlap of 4 lights in the room it seemed to be plenty of coverage.
So I could do 12 per cycle and averaged about 6oz per plant. A runt could get 4....and a good one could end up at about 8. So that's a big difference. I figure to do 8 or better with the way the new ones look. The canopys are just so wide and big.
I know I have rambled on and on here...but I'm hoping to start this thread and just start answering all the important questions that people have to help me improve not only quality of my smoke....(I just recently starting doing a more major flush instead of water for the last 3 feedings) but maybe help cut my costs.
I will post pics if I can figure it out. And in my next post I'm gonna give as many details as I can. In as many areas as I can think of. Hope people will be patient and understand if its all over the place. I have so many questions.
Thanks in advance and I hope atleast a few of you made it this far.
Will try adding photos soon

I would veg with t5 lights first. N 3 plants per 1000 watt? Hope their huge. Veg 20 n 4 or 18 n 6. N if ur not pullin a gram a watt ur not cutting it. I also in a flower room zigzag pattern my light schedule to save power at times and it doubles grams per watt. I use 600 instead of thousands as far as hps lights. Twice the coverage area.

Ok maybe my math is off. But a gram per watt? Ok so 1000w should produce 1000 grams? That's like 35oz per light.
2lbs+ per plant? I am getting more than the guy who taught me and he uses co2 and has better lights. I average 6-8oz per plant and have usually 8plants with 2 lights. I have bigger canopys this time around and am gonna have to go 1 plant per light. I am sure the yield will be up if I don't burn the buds near the lights.
The new plants are 2 and a half weeks into flowering and are 52in in diameter.

having big trees under lights isnt going to give you the best GPW, unless you do some sortof training to the plants to maximize their surface area with an even canopy. Examples of this are Scog(screen of green) and Vscrog(vertical screen of green). those two techniques are good for maximizing yeild from big plants. If you want to increase your harvest while doing the traditional method of having lights suspended above the plants, you should use smaller plants(saves time/money in veg as well) and have many of them under each light. for example 1 plant per square foot, with a short vegg. You wont have to top the plants just let them grow straight up. each plant will produce less bud per plant but because youll be able to fit so many plants under the lights you will end up with a much larger yeild. Because the plants are so much shorter you can bring the lights down much further which means that the entire length of the plant will get a good amount of light. This is called a Sea of Green(SOG) and is the most common method for indoor growing.