How Much Lighting Do I Have Here?

[Winterlily]

I asked this question in the hardware section but did not get an answer, and it was suggested to me that this was the better place to ask! So here goes:

I've got three 5.5 gallon tanks in a row right next to each other (for male bettas). They are 16" long each, so all three together are 48" long. I didn't want to get strip lights for each, mostly because I could only get Aqueon/AGA ones that way, and they are bulky (depth-wise) and overwhelm the teensy little glass canopy. Plus, it works out far more expensive to do 3 individual strip lights than to just get one 48". So I got a Coralife T5 Aqualight, single bulb (comes with ColorMax I believe - will be replacing that with their daylight type bulb [6700k] for plants). Thing is, it's a 28w bulb going on 5.5 gallon tanks. Since it's going to be spread out over 3 tanks, does that mean each tank won't get 28w? Or doesn't it work like that? All 3 tanks will have live plants (easy ones because I haven't a clue what I'm doing). So! What does a 48" 28w bulb stretched over three 5.5 gallon tanks (they are 12" high I think, if it matters) work out to be as far as wattage per gallon? Is it as simple and straight-forward as 28 divided by 5.5? Or because 3 tanks are sharing it, that number then has to be divided further by 3??

Thanks!

 

[three-fingers]

Simply put, the WPG rule is rubbish anyway, but basically you would just divide by 3, yes.

It's a T5 bulb though, so better than the T12 bulbs the WPG rule is based on. Though you will want a reflector to increase the light.

No point in changing the bulb, the one you have will be fine for plants, no better or worse than a 6700K bulb really, just use whatever looks best to your eyes colour rendition wise.

It's hard to judge without seeing our setup exactly, but I'd estimate you would be great for growing most "low"-"medium" light plants

 

[Winterlily]

Thanks for the reply! Ah, okay, I thought for whatever reason that if I was dealing with 5+ wpg, it was "bright" light. But as I said, I don't know what I'm doing (yet) with plants! The strip light does have a reflector built in (this is it) so I don't need anything else, right? Okay, so I'll stick with the low to medium light stuff; that I can do.

 

[three-fingers]

Yep, all looks good .

 

[Winterlily]

Thank you so much!!