Well guys and girls i spent a couple days researching hid lighting possiblities( I guess I felt like spending some money). As you can see i'm currently using fluro tubes, 3- 2bulb fixtures w/cfl sidelighting. I plan on adding another fixture in the next day or so totaling 4 fixtures & the cfls. I got on atlantis hydroponics website and they had lumen output for the different lights, which was nice so i could do some comparison and found some interesting numbers.
3 fixtures plus cfls i'm using 300w and 25,200 lumens and spent about $65
4 fix + cfls - 380w - 32,000 L - $75
1 250w hid - 20,000L - didn't price after i seen lumen output
1 400w hid - 50,000L - $300
1 600w hid - 86,000L - $360
1 1000w hid - 133,000(Sunmaster bulb) - $390

I only plan on having 6 plants at a time and probably only maturing 3-4, so price per lumen output seem to still be a better deal w/ the tubes i'm currently using. I don't have a heat issue yet and if i do i can always relocate the ballasts outside the box in a custom fan cooled box. I even looked into overdriving the tubes but at the moment space isn't an issue. These are still the cheap 2 bulb fixtures for $8 bucks and T12 bulbs. I realise the T8's are lower watts and higher output and the T5's are even better, but then you start to climb back into more expensive bulbs and fixtures. So thats just some food for thought, any comments are appreciated as my research my be completly wrong but, so far it seems that fluro's aren't as bad as people make them out to be.