total wattage?

im growing in a 3x3x3 box and im wondering what the total wattage using CFL's
is needed to keep ONE plant healthy and happy during the grow?

ive also heard for example if the magic number is 400 watts, its better to keep more lights of smaller wattage rather than fewer lights of higher wattage. Is this true?

Currently using a bunch of big bulbs (400w equivalent CFL) bulbs and I started out using all 26w (100w equivalent which is what people usually go with) and I can tell you from experience the plants like the bigger bulbs. No heat means the plants take as much of the light as you can give...man I wish I could show you pictures of how well 2700k CFL's are doing for my NL #5...

To answer your question, I first need to know what style of lighting you're doing; clamp lamps or y splitters? I am using clamp lamps because you can get reflectors with them and it increases the light output by a ridiculous amount compared to without for CFL...for y-splitters the biggest you might wanna do is the 42w (150w equivalent) and just see how it works. For one plant I use 2 300w CFL's and 2 42w CFL's...though I'm trying to make CFL actually produce bud worth a damn haha. Up to whatever your conditions can handle man.

as many as you can fit, i'd say 12-15 cfl would definitely be enough.

12 13w bulbs? or what if i went with 8 42w bulbs?
im using y splitters and im gonna build a reflector for the top lined with mylar

well calculate how many lumens each would give, but I can tell you 42w will be your better bet. You'll wanna get either 8 of both 2700k and 6500k or 4 of each, but you need 6500k for vegging and 2700k for flowering. From personal experience I can tell you that without at least half of your light in the 2700k range you wont get good bud during flowering. 2700k is the soft white color if you're getting em from a hardware store like lowes or homedepot

I am using 2 - 64 watt (300 eq) cfls in a y splitter just fine, also have a four way split with 24ish (100 eq) covering 4 plants in a (roughly) 2.5x2x4h box grow and the girls are looking really good. its hard to find 6500k bulbs larger than 23 watts for cheap, but lowes carries that wattage "daylight" bulbs, they actually are 6500k. home depot's daylights are 5500k and shouldnt be used. but both places do have the big 64 watt 2700k cfls for 15 bucks, HD is maybe a buck cheaper on it. hope this helps a bit