Please verify my final lighting choices!

The nova's cram their lights in like most rigs, but at least they use individual reflectors. You'll probably get a bit of a bump up from the equivalent wattage in CF.

The coralife have semi-individual reflectors last I checked; sort of wavy. Odds are your quality of light isn't going to be quite so hot as on the nova's per watt.

All the same I'd say your lighting rig looks appropriate for mid to low, considering your use of prefab lights. You could get better quality of lighting if you ran individual strips spaced out from each other; there would be more light hitting lower parts of the leaf, making for healthier growth. Your issue with all of the tanks will be ground cover, since while its lighting requirements aren't anything special, they'll be the most shaded and receiving the least light. If you're doing tall plants in the back, be sure to move your lighting fixture into the front 1/3rd; the tops of the tall plants closer to the light don't need the light directly over them.

For the 46g, if it's giving you trouble, try a big batch of DIY CO2 and some excel. If that isn't your think, go compressed. Personally I'd consider doing one less tank and getting compressed CO2 on all the other tanks if they're close together via a 3-way manifold.

One thing to note is that high light plants aren't really high light; they're high CO2 demand. I've got some very healthy H. difformis that tropica once listed as high light, but now considers medium, sitting in less than 1wpg. Even brilliant red plants and picky ground covers can be grown in low light, so long as the light gets to them. The issue is getting that low light down low in the tank through good light spread, and keeping the CO2 up.

-FST

 

The light you need depends on what you want to grow. What are your plans here? Are you looking to do a packed out, high density tank with ground cover? Are you trying to just add a few simple background plants to make things look a little better? I grow less sensitive stems under stock light in my breeder and grow-out tanks all the time.

-Philosophos