Germinating is easy as pie. Here's a simple super reliable way to handle your issue.
Soak a paper towel with tap water. Squeeze all of the water out of the towel gently, then fold it up and put your seeds on the inside pocket. Place it on a clean sterile dinner plate. Place a clean sterile opaque cereal bowl over that so no light or air gets in. Place it in a dark, room temp, clean place. I use a cabinet over my stove.
24-48 hours your seeds will germ, roughly 100%. Take out your rock wool and soak it in 5.5 ph RO water (tap water if you can't get RO water, but Walmart sells it by the gallon.) Put each seed into it's own completely soaked cube, white stem side down. Pinch the top of the rock wool together.
Put these bad boys directly under a compact fluorescent light. Just a shop light is absolutely fine. This is better for germing than MH because MH produces a lot of heat so it has to be many inches over the cubes. CFL produces very little light and can virtually touch the cubes (stretching problem fixed.) They will sprout over the next few days. Once you see the first pair of ribbed leaves start using a 100-200ppm 5.5-6ph solution of RO water and your veg nutes. I use FoxFarm Grow Big and have always been fine with it, but really any roughly 4-1-1 nute is fine. Always keep those lights literally right on top of the plants. Go on with your veg.
Good luck with E & G, it's been good to me.