I checked my local area and asked several of my friends at work and found one that knew a guy who does distribution for warehouse lighting (sounds odd right?). So I found (unfortunately) after I purchased a 4x 2' T5 HO setup for ~$100 that I could have gotten a 6x 4' T5 HO for the same price with similar bulbs. Moral of the story: 1) 'grow lights' are nothing more than 6500K bulbs* 2) There is no such thing as a 'special' 'grow light' fixture -- with two caveats: Some grow light have 'lenses' behind the bulbs for focusing light down, and/or have several mounting brackets on the frame for hanging/vertical/horizontal mounting. 3) Simplicity is key. If I knew a week ago what I know now, I could have more than doubled my light output/area. 4) LED's are an expensive option at this point in time (from what I understand) So it's a learning process, but I guess that's why we're here right? I'm somewhat an newbie but done several hours of reading on the indoor growing/starting subject with artificial lighting. * 6500K bulbs work, from what I understand having half a set of 2800K's on hand for fruit/vegetable production is possibly a 'bonus' during that stage. Also I have read several posts regarding purely 6500K full production so I guess hands up on this one? -- Though scientific journals indicate that proper red/blue spectrum are important for proper development, blue being key i.e. 6500K's... So I'm still looking for a correlation from the pure LED documents to pure florescent. Good luck, I'm doing my indoor grow project now with what I've researched.

Certainly putting them there is better than shoving them in a closet or throwing them away ;)

I've used metal halide plus fluorescents and have had my plants bloom during the winter. Not sure if it's because of the halide lamp, or just because the timers were set to more than 12 hours. Bloom colors are very faded out though -- that is, you lose a lot of the red colors. All maintained their leaves, though a few yellowed and dropped. But you don't really want to encourage leafy growth anyway, since it's usually weak, and foliage will be happy hunting grounds for spider mites. Penang Peach under lights (no red present): 'Red Samoan' under lights (normally hot pink):

It is not just the quantity of light (number of hours) but also the quality of light that matters. A T12 light gives much weaker light than a T5. Neither gives a plant the equivalent light energy or spectrum of the sun. I definitely saw an improvement in growth when I increased the number of hours my seedlings were exposed to T12 lights, and 24/7 produced the best results. With a better light source, like T5s, a dark period seemed to help. But I think 18 hours of T5 light was better than 14 or 16. HID and HPS lights provide much better light than any fluorescent light can, and could probably be used for a shorter light cycle. Choosing supplemental lighting that provides something close to what natural sunlight provides is more complicated than just matching the number of hours of exposure.