Question
Is it possible to give too much fluorescent light for typical Asian pitcher plants?  I recently moved about 6 (medium to large) Nepenthes in an area about 4ft by 16".  The plants are under 2 shop lights with 2 4ft fluorescent bulbs each and the the top leaves are about 6 to 9 inches from the lights.  Half of the plants also receive about an 1 1/2 hours of eastern sunlight.  I used to have enough sunlight for all my plants but a recent move has left me to experiment.  

Thanks
JJ

Answer
Hi JJ,

Yes and no.  With small plants, if the lighting is too intense, you'll end up with smaller, yellow leaves.  So if you see the leaves turning yellow, simply move the light source further back.

With large plants, it's difficult to provide uniform lighting since the top parts of the plant will receive more intense lighting than the lower parts.  Again, if the upper leaves begin to yellow, then you should consider moving the lights slightly higher.  But the trade off is that the lower sections of the plant will not receive as much light.

Since you have the plants next to an east window, this might help some, but not a whole lot.  

On the issue of lighting, I prefer to err on the side of providing too much light rather than too little.  At our nursery, we're certainly guilty of that, but the plants are much tougher and can adapt to a wide variety of growing conditions once we ship them out.  With intense lighting you risk leaf burn, but with low lighting you risk weakening your plant so that it can't defend itself from pests and diseases.  

Your set up seems perfectly fine.  It's a matter of fine tuning it throughout the growing season.

Good growing!
Jacob Farin