I know A LOT of people will disagree with me here, but based on my personal experience with Biocubes you can do a lot with the stock setup. With lighting, you can leave it stock with the Power Compact lights and grow pretty much any coral. I have the PC lights on mine and have LPS, softies, SPS all thriving with no problems. The key is knowing your corals and placing them where they will be best suited (i.e. my SPS are at the top of the tank and zoas and low light are at the bottom). The colors on the colors will be a muted compared to using LEDs but the corals will grow with no problem. I have found corals are more dependent on proper water flow and water quality than lighting.
As far as filtration goes, again I have a very simple setup. Remove the bioballs that come on the biocube and simply replace with live rock rubble. I use the stock filter pad/carbon filter in the 1st chamber, at the top of the second chamber I have a Chemi-pure Elite (activated carbon and scrubs phosphates) that then goes to live rock. That is it (no protein skimmer or anything else). On top of that I do weekly 15% water changes and my water is fine with everything happy. I have only lost 1 piece of coral (zoa frag) to a red eye devil crab and all my corals are happy.
With that said if you want to have a very nice tank you can get an LED kid, add on a protein skimmer and what not but it is not necessary. I think it is more important to know your livestock and not overstock on fish. If you know what your corals like and place them appropriately in your tank then you should not have any problems. Let me know if you have any questions.
