Truthfully,I don't even bother with the "grow" lights. Regular compact fluorescent curly-cue bulbs have been doing just fine for me for years..

Many many moons ago I had a basement apartment wherein the second bedroom had no windows and thus no natural light at all. I had two or three ten gallon aquariums in there with pieces of glass set on top of them and "shop lights" on top of that. The four foot tubes weren't "grow lights" by any stretch of one's imagination...just regular 'ole tubes.

I had them on 24-7 and everything planted in those terraria grew just fine.

I know that plants in the wild aren't getting 24hr exposure to the sun and need a break from an extended photoperiod,but I just left the lights on. I guess my thinking was that this is fake light that isn't providing what natural light would provide,so...why not just give 'em MORE of it to make up for it,right?

Pretty sure that many here will point out how I am in error in doing this,but I still do it to this very day. lol

That would have to be a plant with very low light requirements and/or the side table will have to receive a great deal of light from the window if you aren't going to have the lamp light directed on the plant. Regular daylight spectrum cfl will work fine. Go for a 100-200W equivalent.

It does get quite a lot of light from the window, and when I'm not reading with the light, it'll be directed at the plant. It doesn't really have to have a light; I just feel like if the lamp is there anyway, it should provide light that the plant can use. Sounds like the compact fluorescent already in the lamp is probably good enough. Thanks guys.

It does get quite a lot of light from the window, and when I'm not reading with the light, it'll be directed at the plant. It doesn't really have to have a light; I just feel like if the lamp is there anyway, it should provide light that the plant can use. Sounds like the compact fluorescent already in the lamp is probably good enough. Thanks guys.

I would recommend those 26w (100w-equivalent ) compact fluorescent light bulbs that are labeled as "daylight," and give off light in the 6,500K spectrum. It'll have this info somewhere on the labeling.

I use these bulbs to grow my Venus FlyTraps, and they love it. VFTs require full sunlight to grow their best, and they do just fine under these lights.