Ok, so finally!

[Nocturnus]

So my 10g planted tank is gone. I now have a 10g tank, diy hood and a setup of 4 CF lights. I was looking at getting 4 50/50 lights from hellolights and setting up my nano reeef. Would this be enough (or maybe to much) light for this setup? I plan on adding some coral later on down the road (wish I could find the list of what I wanted) and a fish.

[Twins Guy]

doubtful anyone here is gonna tell you that's too much light (copyright 400W MH on a 5). you should specify what wattage the "CFs" are. 13 watt-ers? i have the hellolights 50/50 (half 10K/half Actinic) 13watt bulb and it looks nice. bright, too blue for some though.

[Nocturnus]

Yeah, my bad.. 13w bulbs. Would it better to to maybe do 2 of the 50/50 and 2 daylight (6500k since they dont have any 10k 13w bulbs listed). I'm not against having to go with another CF configuration, was just gonna keep it simple since I already have a 4 socket kit.

[Korbin]

I would try to get at least 1 or 2 actinic bulbs on a separate circuit so you can light up those corals that like to glow, IMO.

You can get actinics from hellolights.com. I just ordered one. (uh oh, I hope I got the right one).

 

If you cant do that, you would be fine doing all 50/50. My tank is just 50/50.

[printerdown01]

I wouldn't recommend hellolights 13W for lighting a main tank, for a few reasons: 1) The ballast sits right on the end cap, and causes quite a bit of heat (thus, over-heating would be a concern). 2) They used, what appears to be, hot glue to attach their reflector to their ballast/end cap. So what's the problem? When the light heats up so does the glue. The glue melts and ceases to function as an adheasive... 3) The actinic (at least on my bulb) has started to fade. It is no where near the brightness that it used to be, and I would also suspect a serious spectrum shift.

...My solutions (as far as solutions could be had with this light): I have the light about 4" or so away from the top of the tank, and have drilled holes in the hood to allow more heat to escape. I have scraped as much of the crapy glue as I could off, and used super glue. As for the actinic fading.... For me it really doesn't matter, I have it over my refugium.

...Personally if I were you, I would go with 2x28 or 2x32... But this is only what I would do, I am not you, and thus it should be taken as nothing more than my humble opinion .