Very nice job buddy. Had the same issue..I got hardly any fade. But, I did remove nearly all my fan leafs. But, not 1 sugar leaf got a deep fade. I done the Auto version twice now. Had her 80 days. And not much of any color on the leafs. But she's still a very stinky orange pungent girl. Am dying to try the fem version.
BTW, you talked about speeding up the process. If you use a far red 730nm light. It'll speed up the time it takes a fem to flip. The limbo period I call it. As you prob know it can take up 2 wks for a fem to flip. A far red speeds this up by least 50%. It increases your flowering time to 13.5hrs in pre F, 14 for fattening and then back to 12 for ripening but still using the Far Red, as norm it takes a plant 2hrs to fall asleep. By using IR for 5-10m after lights out, puts your plant to sleep in 5m. And therefore giving you more Flowering time. Mars Hydro have a good 1. Covers 4x4. 2 bars, Also has a UV addition. If needed there's a discount code on my page, or if you need details about it, I'll send you the link I read up about these.
Good Growing.
