I have grown my seeds under lights and I use the ordinary fluorescent bulbs that are warm. You do need to adjust the height of these lights as your seedlings start to grow.
I have mine on small chains attached to a hook in the ceiling so that I can adjust the height easily.
hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: organic gardening.

Five foot doesn't really tell us enough. A typical five foot T8 (one inch thick) fluorescent tube will run at 40W but they are also available in 60W high output form. The 40W versions are really not spectacularly bright but are certainly suitable for seedlings and low light plants.

The 60W CFL is, I assume, actually a 14W CFL equivalent to a 60W regular bulbs? It will appear bright because all the light is coming from a tiny bulb but is actually putting out much less light than one of your five foot tubes. Forget it,, it isn't helping. Even if you have tracked down a real 60W CFL (much bigger than a regular light bulb), it will still only be putting out about the same light total as one of the five foot tubes. That's a useful amount of light assuming you need it concentrated in a small area. Get a reflector for it.

Thanks for replying. Okay so in the span of the afternoon between when I posted that msg until now, I've done ALOT of reading about lighting on the internet. In retrospect I probably should have done that before posting here - sorry about that! I realize that my lights are not even T8s..they're 48 inch T12 tubes, at 34 watts. No wonder they were so dim. And there's only 2 of them.

The CFL is a 60W CFL, much bigger than a regular bulb. I bought it at a hydroponics store, waaaay back when I was hesitant about making the investment. Looking back, it would probably have been worth it going for a more complete lighting system than opting for this CFL, which still cost like 30-40 bucks. It's annoying because my grow area is long, so the CFL isn't too great, being a point source of light.

I think I'm going to go for a T5 fixture that's 4' long, and holds 4 bulbs. At a total of 20k lumenal output, I'm thinking I should be able to achieve the 2000 foot candles I need, if my plants are around 4-6 inches away from the tubes. Luckily, I'm growing orchids, so until they produce bloom spikes, height won't really change.

Does this sound good, or are there advantages of MH lamps that I'm unaware of? (I'm aware of the disadvantage of heating up)

I agree with both your points. The 34W T12s are really pretty poor tubes, big fat things that don't put out a lot of light. And for the cost of your 60W CFL you could have got yourself a decent two or four tube system that would put out a lot more light.

The T5 system you mention should do the job if your plants are a nice even height and not too tall. If you are just over-wintering then a four-tube T8 system from Home Depot should be sufficient and a whole lot cheaper. If you need to push the light intensity even higher than you would be looking at metal halides which are a point source like your CFL only ten times more light!