I am limited in the space so I'm looking to buy an 18" T5 fixture, but not having any luck finding one. Does anyone know where I can purchase one? Seems the smallest size I can find is 24 inches.
well your not going to get much light out of a 18' tube. i have 4 22' t5 14w tubes and each one puts out 1350 lumens. i also have 3 100w cfls and they put out 1600 lumes each. both are cheap both dont give off very much heat. but look into cfls gotta think about the fixture too. cfls all you need is a tiny fixture that screws onto the end. tubes you need a whole fixture the length of the tube. they also sell y splits to turn one socket into 2 for cfls. all im saying is look into cfls if you cant find any tubes
Hmmm didn't realize that CFL's put out that much lumen, that was one of my other main concerns too. I'm definitely gonna look into CFL, thanks!
those are crappy 14w t5's from like home depot or something like that - you need the T5-HO or High Output they are 28w for the 24 inch and 54w for the 48 inch ones - over 5000 lumens or almost 100 lumens per watt
High Output T5 bulbs are multiple times better than CFLs. Anyone who uses CFLs to grow anything does not have experience growing successfully. Gram for gram, CFLs suck.