1. 18 guage solid core should be fine and is used in most fixtures/diy
2. workhorse ballast are not T5 specific -they HARDSTART which is tough on bulb life expenency. with that said, TEK uses them in their fixtures as does Aquatantics (spelling?). Their justification is that hardstarts are ok if you arent turning the lights on several times a day and in our reefs we usually turn them on once a day. I have no data to back up the longetivity issue but with the number of bulbs your looking to drive and the 8-12 month bulb expectancy i would error on the side of caution and change the ballast to an Accustart or similar.
if you do choose to stay with the workhorse, get a second one and run 6 off one and two off the other (you can get a wh5 instead of a wh7 to save some $$) or 4 and 4. That way you can run a dawn dusk effect if you want and you can still have some light should one ballast blow. Workhorses are pretty cheap to begin with anyways. I know with IceCap they have a length and bulb number max depending on the ballast. 6 leads on the ballast would make me think 6 bulbs is the max (running 36"/39w at most)
4. ATI bulbs have the most par from what actual testing shows. By actinic are you looking for the most blue look? try the ati blue plus (comparable to the kz super blue) but has high par. Alot of halide users use them to give there tanks a more 14-15k look while running a 10k halide.
-vince
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