will it work

Leathers only require low to moderate lights, so you could keep leathers in much less light than that. Those lights would be fine for anything you wanted to keep.
 
With 250 watt HQI halides no more than around a foot off the water you can keep nearly all SPS at the bottom of the tank and get good growth potential from most of them, but for leathers and some softies you might think about not putting them directly under the lights even when at the bottom of the tank. The edges of the tanks and slightly under overhanging shelves of live rock is good. With some coral gradual adaption to halide lighting intensity over a period of several weeks is considered wise.
 
My tank is 7 feet long, but I use a 6 foot long halide fixture. I have about a foot on each side where the halides aren't as bright. That's where I keep my softies and mushrooms.
 
i but i dont really wanna risk hurting them and that seems like a lot of lite for a tank that only 28" deep
 
In reef tanks any thing over 18 inches is considerd deep. At a depth over 18" the 250 watt halides are recommended with 150 watt for depths above a8 inches. That is to keep SPS anywhere in tank. But as already written above, softies, leathers and some large polyp corals can grow fine with less light. It is much easier to find spots of lesser lights for softies, leathers and LPS corals than it is to try to get many strongly lit spots for light loving coral in a less brightly lit tank. Not many people like the look of a tank with all the corals stuck up in the top half or third of a tank. Ther are commercial propagators regularly using 400 watt halide lights on tanks only 24 to 36 inches deep.
 
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