I can understand you apprehension and the fact that you WANT TO BE A GOOD PARENT is oh how shall i say this lovely in my opinion. T5's can grow just about anything including insect larvae lmao! Once you see how well plants respond to the right par light spectrums for the growth period there in its a wondeful sight. Here's something to bear in mind, t-5's flouros shoot a blueish par spectrum when they are at 6000k at 3000k they throw more of a reddish par spectrum, the differance being bluer spectrums for vegatative growth and red for flowering. Bear in mind weather its flouro's or hid's your trying to imitatate nature! No way in hell that hid will hurt them unless you keep them so close to the lamp that it burns them, but you sound like a caring devoted parent who wouldnt haphazardly just throw them into an oven. Hid's are sexier than t-5's when it comes to overall growth and ripening flowers this IS MY OPINION ONLY. My advice if you can afford it would be grab a 600 watt cooltube, a decent inline fan, and a grow tent at least gl120 in size, i think they are 3' x 11" and 7-8 feet high. Once they have gotten a week or two under those t-5's and have established enough rootbase to be sturdy when you grab the stalk, then throw em under that damn hid why not use it its there!? Just try to find the sweet spot heat wise once its been on for oh say 15-20 minutes. If you have no airflow attached to said hid than try to make some sort of airflow over your babies, kinda like a smooth spring breeze kinda wind! there hope this helped.