Fluorescent "plant lights" are a marketing gimmick to extract profits. Just use cool white (4100K) T8 lamps. I buy mine from businesslights.com because they sell the high output variety, which home cheepo probably don't sell (but do check the lumen output to be sure), and businesslights.com prices are as low as they come. Once you buy the lamp, it will run 4 years continuously or 7 years on a 12/12 schedule, so it's worthwhile to be choosy.

will all i need be the light and the thing the light plugs into? i have never gone down this road before so i'm very new to using lights to grow. i'm also concerned about energy usage. to me, if it wasn't to expensive to run, i'd do it but i don't want to pay an extra $20 dollars a month to run my lights.

i have looked into led lights but everyone has a different oppinion on those.

thanks for the help,

nik

that's all you need. it must suck real bad to not be able to spend an extra 20$ a month on electricity for lights.
if you're spending 10 cents per KWH, that means you can run 100 watts for 10 hours for 10 cents. one month of doing that adds up to $3. one four foot two lamp t8 fixture will burn close to 70 watts. if you run it 24 hours a day, it will cost about 16 cents a day to run. 2 fixtures would be about 30 cents, and now that starts to get close to 9 dollars if you're paying 10 cents per kwh. this amount of light might be enough for a one foot by four foot garden (four square feet). what exactly do you wish to grow anyway?

im just looking for a little more light for my plants, a few ferns, an african violite, an umbrella plant and a few others. i didn't releaze that it was so cheap to run the lights.
you have been very helpful!!

so two t8 cool white tube lamps is all i'm going to need, thats good news man...

I am having good succes with compact floresents. I use a combination of 5,00 K & 2700 K, 3900 lumens