Hi everyone. I am about to germ some church, diesel, sweet tooth seeds. I am going to begin indoor because all my previous seedlings and baby plants were either eaten, or stormed out.
I have researched a fair bit on the cfl's and T5's. I made a trip to home depot and wal mart today to do a pre inspection. home deopot had 42 watt 6400k cfls. but i was not able to find a T5 that matched the specs that have been suggested in other threads. I looked for a T5 h/o 6500k 96 watt and found up to aprox 23 watt........was i looking at the wrong thing? or is this a dro shop specialty item?
I am wanting to buy these lights tommorow, so any help will be greatly appreciated!! also I was not able to find any 2' 4 bulb fixtures.

thanks alot!!

Yea, outdoors can suck. I've had numerous plants destroyed(they eat the fucking stems! WTF!?) by grasshoppers(my best guess). Then again, some thrive.... go figure. I find forested areas work the best, they seem to have other species which control pests.

The wattage of CFL is pretty much insignificant(higher IS NOT better). They all produce nearly the same lumens per watt. Actually, the lower the wattage, the higher the efficiency! I like 23-26 watt CFLs, they're small and produce lots of light. You'd be best off with more lower-wattage bulbs than a single high watt bulb. Besides, this allows much better coverage as well.

The thing about common CFLs is the spiral, which is magnificent, IMO. You have 'multiple tubes' all producing light. This is multiplicative(FOUR TIMES, for a 20-something watt), and creates a higher 'photon density'.

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Yeah, the bigger CFL's and the HO T5's are generally only available at Hydro/Specialty Shops. Quite honestly though I recommend going with a 250 watt HID. It's gonna cost you about the same (If you were gonna by the 4ft Length, 4 bulb HO T5) but your yields will be at least double.

I'm just about finished with my HO T5 grow (complete journal coming soon) and I'll tell you, it's just not that impressive, and a 250 HID isn't going to send your electric bill to any ridiculous levels either, and is still stealthy.

The T5 is great for veg though. Cheap to run, efficient, and really does a decent job at 8000 lumens per bulb, but you really can't compete with HID's for flowering, you just can't. 8000 < 32,000 lumens.

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Loose lips sink ships.

Do you not have a credit or debit card?

I have tried to stay away from the cards other than the seed order. I did buy some 42 watt 6500k daylight cfls and some T12 40 watt daylight deluxe bulbs. So far all 28 seeds have germinated, and sprouted. and second set of leaves are coming. it has been 1 week since i began germination.
And you are saying the smaller cfls with lower wattage and kelvin are just as usuable as the larger ones? I did find some 60w cool white h.o. bulbs but was not able to find a fixture to support more than 40w. Ill keep a close eye to see if they need more. i have a total of 8 bulbs right now. any other suggestions are appreciated. thanks.