Fishdoc, I think that bulb Melev uses is great. Now I haven't used it myself, but it fits the bill of everything you want, its intense (65 watts wasn't it, and they're "better" better watts too! More efficient ones than the watts per gallon rule, btw Anthony I hate those rules as well
), it's compact (no 2-4 foot bulbs here), its focused (you point the light where you want it doesn't shine all over the place), it doesn't require anything overly special (a standard plug for bulbs, no ballasts, no endcaps, no worries about matching up exact bulbs), and its good price for the length the bulb lasts (CF bulbs have a life time of 5+ years,
note: I'm unsure how the color spectrum works over this time line).
All this talk of flow, surge, etc has gotten me to rethink my future tank setup now and has actually given me a bit of an idea. I was toying with the idea of using a skimmerbox inside my show tank (135g) and pulling a siphon straight to my macro-tank (50g) without the need for an outside overflow box, since the other tank itself would essentially be that outside box and keep the flow regulated, unfortunately that tank on the stand I got (free tank + cheap $20 stand) is about 10" lower than the show tank that idea went out the window. Although I have been toying with putting it up on blocks to raise it, it just would look to ghetto. Now with this surge idea, I might have the perfect solution, siphon all the overflow to surge box/bucket/tank (whatever I get my hands on) the surge itself would prevent oversiphoning from occuring (just like the outside overflow box does), and then instead of putting a steady current into the macro tank (ie refugium) it would surge it when the surge filled to the trigger point.
The benifit of this is I get my surge action, the same amount of flow is still occuring just with breaks inbetween (which could actually be benificial), and best of all malfunctions are no longer an issue, since if for whatever reason the surge flapper (or whatever mechnism I go with) fails the surge won't overflow since it'll stop when it reaches the level of the show tank, or if the flapper doesn't go down, then I have a standard overflow (of course if the return pump fails there could be issues). Best of all, no need for an additional pump to fill the surge.
Anyways sorry to sidetrack, just had some musings I wanted to share, if anyone is interested in a diagram I'll whip one up later, now I gotta go to work though. Man I love this thread