you are talking about a biocube right? ya if you stick a 10k and a actinic bulb in there you corals will do great. the shop i work at we had one one of those running 3 years straight no trouble just change bulbs ever 10 months. we had softs and lps mostly but i had a sps in it for alil while and it did ok. i love the biocubes. the 8 is just alil small for a novice