CF lights or regular Fluorescent lights?

[Savannah125]

I'm new to this forum and have a semi basic question. Well from what I can tell Aquarium lighting isn't as basic as I had hoped it would be. First off I'm putting together a 125g FW setup. I just finished building the stand the other day. I'll start out small with some African fish and probably keep it that way I may even add some plants but I'm not looking to grow an underwater jungle. Question would a CF setup be the way to go? It looks like these are mainly used for Reef and straight Salt water setups. Would this type of lighting be over kill for my setup. From the prices I've seen it will cost me around $100 to put basic fluorescent lights in prolly 2ea 36" hoods. I found someone on Ebay selling CF 72" -384 Watt
2ea. 96w day + 2ea 96w Actinic + 6 blue moon LEDs. All this for about $200 plus shipping. So do I go with the bare essentials or go for top of the line?

 

[paulioo]

If your not going for a heavily planted tank then CF would be a waste of money and would possibly lead to some serious algae issues. If you have alot of light, which CF provides, but dont have a sufficient amount of plants then algae will thrive.

IMO save your money and go for standard fluorescents.

Paul.