I am going to be growing under 6 T5 high output lights (they use ballasts) but id like to take a clone off each plant (6 plants in total) root it and force it to flower to determine the sex of the plant it came from so i can destroy the males earlier in the grow. would 1 23W CFL do the job? (Id only flower 2-3 clones at a time) would it be enough light to get them to show sex?
Flower them all, clones dont like a lot of light so your fine. Do as many clones as you can since it's your first time and just put them all under that one light. I recommend you just take all the branches from the bottom half of your plant and clone them since it's your first time success rates will be really low so do it right and you cant go wrong. Also, since your using fluro tubes you wont get enough penetration to make much of a difference to the lower buds so removing them will actually help your yeild a lot. Then if you like you can just grow the female clones through and have even more bud!
the lower branches will get light if im going to have the tubes vertically 3 on each side of the plant. the light don't fit across the top of my closet so ive either got to have the lights on an angle tilting upward or have them vertical down the sides of the plants, what would you recommend me doing? the tubes are 10'000k do you think it will be ok to flower with them? or should i try my luck at finding a few 2'700k T5 tubes?
that'll be good enought to determine sex if you have magnifying glass, otherwise it would take too long for the pistils/stigmas to be visible. 1 23W CFL per plant would be fine without the magnifying glass.