Lighting virgin-I need your help!

[DanG]

one other thing to take into consideration is that MH light will be very intense right under it and then diminish over distance away from the centre of the bulb, with T5's using individual reflectors, you get the same intensity over the whole length. Plus the ability to run a dusk/dawn effect (assuming you have more than one 2 bulb set of T5's. I've found you just have so much more flexibility when it comes to tuning the colour output of your lights with T5's when you have a multi bulb setup. 6 lights gives you way more options for tuning than 1.