Lighting question (t5)

Hey guys,

I am using 4...4 foot T5 fixture and everything is going great so far. My question is, my girls are getting pretty big and I am nervous in a few days the bottom leaves will not get quality light. Is this something I should be worried about? Does anyone know how far the effectiveness of a T5 light can go? If I have nothing to worry about then great, but if it might be a problem then I would like to take car of it now. My girls will only reach 30 inches max as they are a small autoflowering strain.

Also, if I need to get some CFLs, I was in home depot and the brightest one was 100W equivalent 23W actual. Is this okay? or do I need 100W actual?

Thanks a lot for any info guys.

Well the problem with your fixture is gonna be how much the light dissipates over distance. I used to use such fixtures for seedlings and tried for flowering a couple times. The problems I ran into were light not reaching the lower branches so I pruned them a bit more often. Ide personally suggest asking the guys over in the cfl discussion.

...can you get any side lights in there with them? ...if your in veg I wouldn't be too concern. If your in bloom, you'll get very small, if any buds where there isn't any light (sucker buds)...therefore, I'd suggest you lollipop'n them (remove 1/3 of the growth from the bottom of your plants)

yeah i can try and get some lights on the sides. I was thinking of getting some cfls for this. I actually do have 2 single T5 bulbs from my foxfarm jump start kit. 1 is 2 feet and the other is 4. maybe i can angle them to hit the sides. thanks for the replys