Quote Originally Posted by jiggsaw
I use the GE brand 23W and they work good. I'm using 6 when in flower I'm going up to 12. For two plants. The lumens are 1610 per bulb for 6500 k and 1760 for 2700k. I think people may have problems because they don't make a hood to focus the lights or they try to grow too many plants with too little light. 6 lights per plant is good. I almost bought a huge 6500k cfl from home depot , I forget the name of the brand.
I think the other problem is that they do not place the flourescents close enough to the plants and that they do not use quality flourescents as stated by powernoob, if they did then they would see the results for themselves, the tubes I use have built in reflectors so all the light is focused downward