knna,

I was trying to digest some of your earlier post.

As to my use of 4-4' T5 VHO, it is not the cheapest way out, but gave me a few pluses, like a square light footprint to match my 4'x4' trays and still have room for the Ti SmartLamp mounted in the middle. Something that 8 tubes would make difficult. As to shortened tube life, everything I've read indicates about 50% less usefull life. The 2700K T5 tubes are $9 each, I can afford to change them periodically.

Actually, from a cost standpoint, I would have done better with 2- 200watt 2700K CFLs ($71/ea) and a cheap bright star fixture ($35/ea)....but felt the light coverage better using 4' tubes.

I currently use regular 4' T5s over my ez-cloner set-up, actually two (2) 120s cloners side by side. I currently have a 5 bulb set up that I may increase to 7. I have one 4' in the middle, without reflector that is a super actinic bulb. Talk about blue output....it's all blue. The other 4 tubes are 6500K. I use the single actinic tube for the first 3-5 days, untill the stems sprout, then they get the rest of the light.

In my old set-up for the rotating garden, I clone with Rockwool plugs lit by 5mm LEDs mixed 3 to 1 blues to reds, about 30 watts worth.
My transplants from plugs to 4" delta blocks happens on a 2'x8' shelf that uses HGL DIY 14watt 5mm boards.....16 of them. For the last year and a half the little 5mm LEDs have done their thing...remarkably well. All of this prior to hi-power LEDs, but they actually worked.