I have a hypothesis that color temp is more important then total lumens in overall plant life. We all know that blue light works for vegetating plants and red light is needed for flowering plants. However most flourescents I've seen (including all Compact FL) have a warm bulb used for flowering and the color temperature of these bulbs is 3,000K. In the 2' T12 flourescents that GE makes, the warm bulb puts out 1,350 lumens and has a color temperature of 3,000K. They offer a Plant and Aquarium bulb that only puts out 600 lumens with a color temp of 2700K. The challenge in using a bulb like this is getting enough lumens at that color temperature. My plan is to use 36 bulbs for flowering (24 Plant & Aquarium & 12 Daylight) This combo will give me total lumens of 27,000 for 8 square feet or 3,375 lumens of light per square foot. Well I bought my fixtures and bulbs today and flourescents aren't cheap. The final tally: 19 fixtures @ $18 each and 42 bulbs - 18 Daylight @ $5 each and 24 Plant & Aquarium @ $9 each. So that is a total of $685.

Now many of you will say I could have spent $300 on a dual ballist system with a HID system and gotten a lot more light. My hypothesis is that by literally surrounding my plants with light on all sides with a perfect temperature that my results will be superior to those acheived with HID. To bad I couldn't have done this for a science experiment!!!