My 2cents - I have a BioCube29 and thought the same thing and switched. Maybe I got bad 50/50 bulbs but my tank didn't look the same, worse growth, and increased algae, so I swtched back. Someone told me the 10,000s in a 50/50 are not truly 10,000...
PS, I am in Tucson too, but have been mainly active on another site, I won't mention them here I guess, but I have a pretty long build thread with tons of pictures if you are interested. Maybe I can re-build that here too eventually...