Your are most likely suffering from the 'capacitance' of the data cable. Capacitance is a phenomena that is caused by electrons piling up the surface of metal wire, which makes the cable act as a capacitor. This in effect causes the data signal to change slightly from a square wave into something which, depending on the amount, resembles a saw wave. To be exact the wave starts to look a bit like the teeth on the chain of a chain saw. ws281x chips are edge triggered and very timing sensitive and can not tolerate a lot of capacitance on the data line.
As with capacitors, capacitance of the cable is additive when the cables are parallel (as they are with you) So if you tell me how long your data line is, all added together !
You want to lowest capacitance possible, so you want the thinnest cable, preferably solid, not multi-strand, because this would mean less surface. That your first strip starts to have issues is coincidence, the other strips must also be close to having problems.
The easiest and most effective solution is to add a TLL chip in your circuit, where you connect each strip to it's own output. I usually use a 74HCT04 where i make the signal pass through 2 NOT-gates, and split it in between, so i can get 5 output out of the 6 gates that are on the IC.
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