What are you planning to grow?

Just seed starting. Just started germinating seeds .
Tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, Asian vegetables, etc.

NYC area. I assume it will be under the lights till April ...

For seed starting, I would just buy a couple of cheap shop lights and cheap bulbs. For year round growing, the fancy fixtures last longer and put out more light.

watergal,

Been growing from seed for 12 years with great results and all I ever used was fairly good light fixtures, the ones with the wider top reflectors and 2 regular cheap 40 watt bulbs, one cool and one warm in each fixture.

In my opinion those expensive tubes are a waste of money.

More important is not to drown the seedlings.

Hope this helps,
---Jerry---

above message ment for chefwong.
---Jerry---

Sorry, I wasn't clear about where cheap works!

For seed starting, I have always used cheap tubes and cheap shop lights from the home store. My problems started when I continued running the cheap shop lights year round for growing houseplants. The ballasts just don't hold up under constant use. So I'm now using a combination of metal halide and T5 fluorescent fixtures. I'm still using the old shop lights, but as they die off, I plan to replace with only T5's (expensive but worth it for long-term use, IMO).