How would you figure WPG?

[trainfever]

I have a 45 gallon display tank with another 15 gallons in my sump/refugium. My main tank has 2-95 watt VHOs on it. My sump refugium has a 30 watt and a 15 watt flourescent on it. How would you figure out my watts per gallon?

 

[travis89]

You divide the wattage by the # of gallons.

 

[trainfever]

I know that, but since my tanks are interconnected because of the sump/refugium, would you calculate as if they were separate? or would you total the water from both tanks and divide by the total number of watts from all the light fixtures? my sump/refugium has 15 gallons of water with 45 total watts of light which would be 3 watts per gallon. My display tank has 190 total watts and 45 gallons of water which would be 4.2 wpg. So would you say that my main tank has 4.2 wpg and my sump has 3 wpg? or would the fact that my sump is connected to my main tank, would that take away wattage from the main tank since the water is going through both tanks?

 

[lion_crazz]

Your main tank would have 4.2 watts per gallon, and your sump would have 3 watts per gallon. That is how I would do it. The light from your main tank is not doing anything for whats in your refuge, and vice-versa.

 

[coachklm]

although the whole wpg is wack anyway but to each there own......

now if you say you have 3-4 watts of pc lighting 10-k

or 500w of MH 20-k

because newbies get it in there head that the more watts the better...so lets run out to home depot and get some higher wattage lightbulbs...
2000w shoplight at 4500k aint gonna help nothing but the algea.