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This is my lighting system. Everything is mounted in the hood that I made. I saw a hood for this tank for about 264$, so again I went to the local hardware store. I bought really nice pieces of oak, and finished it with a black gloss. I made my own hood for about 100$ ( not including my labor, but I BUILT IT!!). I have 4 Blue actinic 55 Power compacts, 2 10k 175w German Metal halides, and 1 blue 7 watt Christmas light (moon cycle). The Halides run on my IceCap electronic ballasts (so I didn't have to buy the big ass bulky magnetic ballast, plus I have read that the Electronic are better?) These lights are all cooled by my cooling fans mounted in the hood. My Neptune Aqua controller maintains all of the phases of day light, by means of the X-10 controllers (as seen on my controller page). In the pictures you can see how I have broken the lights into certain channels, 5 all together.. A typical day (programming via Aqua controller) sunrise is : #1 actinic ON. 45 Minutes later #2 Actinic ON, 30 mins later, the #1 Metal Halide on, and 1 Hour after that the #2 Metal halide on.
And for Sunset, it cycles in reverse order to simulate the sun set, where the moon cycle takes over from there. This helps the reef think it is in a natural environment, and allow the fish to spawn, as they would under a real moon cycle. This is all done via the Aqua Controller programming.
The Aqua controller is programmed via a 95/98 application from my PC.
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This setup Illuminates the tank properly as a natural environment, and adds a lot of accent lighting to the room.