Well just to throw in my opion the coralife bulbs 50/50 screw in bulbs never have worked very well for me the ballast always seems to fry after about 3 months... My solution for my 5.5 was just to mod the original abs hood, I used a 6500k cf buld form HD and stuck it in then and then guted the Coralife fixture 2X9W removed the bulbs and clips and marked and cut the plugs that plug onto the light bulbs, I then extended the wires with 5ft or so of 18g wire so that the balast could still sit in the Alum fixture on the floor and power the bulbs (no need to remove the balast but you can if you want)
then i mounted the bulbs in the abs hood right beside the 6500 bulb i used 2 antic bulbs for this... But having said all that it might be better to just build a new wood hood and use 2 x 28w bulbs with a small ballast from HD .... that was the original plan when i set up the 5.5 but i got side tracked and upgraded to a much larger tank... well i hope some one will find this useful...
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