Run them all though 2 cycles then choose.
Yeah, that's the way to do it. You don't know until you've gone all the way with a pheno.
I'm in the middle of a pheno hunt now, and selected about a half dozen plants for clone just as I was switching to 12/12. I picked what I thought were the most promising ones at the time, and I would say about half of them never came close to what I thought was their potential. But I cloned all of the clones, and in a week or so will grow each them out anyway for at least one more run. Even at the end of that, I may select 2 or 3 phenos and give them one more chance before I decide what to keep and what to discard.
For example, I have one plant that's an enormous budder, but it's the last one to finish, and will be as much as 3 weeks behind some of the others. And, I have no way of knowing how potent it will be compared to her sisters. I'll be at least a couple of weeks into the second run already before I can really do a fair comparison. If it turns out to be really potent, I may be willing to sacrifice a couple of weeks of turnaround time each run for the increased yield and high potency, but I have no way of knowing that yet.
And, there's another plant that I cloned a couple of months ago, and pretty much wrote off within a couple of weeks because it was so small. It's less than half the size of some of the others, in some cases only a third as large. But, I took 3 cuts off of her anyway, and now I'm glad I did, because over the last week the original plant is turning a deep shade of purple and exploding in trichomes. It's still a runt, of course, but suddenly it looks like it's going to be some kickass weed with terrific bag appeal.
So, on the second run (and maybe the third) I'll try to see if I can coax some larger buds out of her. I'm pretty sure her size is almost all genetics, because all 3 of her clones are also the smallest in the group, but to some degree there's probably an environmental factor as well. The room was crowded, and because she was slow to develop she was always farther away from the light and sometimes somewhat shaded. If I dial in the nutes and lights to target that plant more specifically, I may be able to work around some of that genetic predisposition. Probably not, but it's worth a try, and again there's no way to have known without going through at least 2 runs.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. Whatever pheno I ultimately decide on, I may very well be growing her for decades. I can take a few extra months to make a more informed decision. It's especially important to me now, because last night I broke down and smoked a tiny amount of some bud from one of the first ones I harvested, and it fucking rocked my world. It was an incredible high; perfect balance between being high and being relaxed, clearheaded and energetic but calm and tranquil at the same time... this looks like it's going to be a really special strain, and I want to make absolutely sure that I'm picking the best of the bunch.
