That's a lot of light, which can cause as many problems as too little light. The good news is that you could probably gorw just about anything with a good substrate and that much light. The bad news is that you'll also probnably be very good at cultivating alge with that much light. The way to beat algae is to make your plants outcompete it for nutrients. The best way to do that is to give them everything they need to keep growing fast and strong. With so much light, you'll want to look into adding CO2 or a carbon supplement of some kind. In such a small tank, you could easily get away with using a supplement such as Seachems Flourish Excel once to twice per week. In fact, I recommend you use ferts such as regular Flourish, Flourish Nitrogen, Flourish Phosphorus, and possibly Flourish Potassium as well. Start with half the recommended dose, and increase as needed. This will cost you an extra $20-$30 every couple of months, but with a small tank, one 8.5 oz. bottle of each will last a fairly long time. I suggest you buy a lot of plants and plant all at once so that lage doesn't have a chance to move in. If your light is a dual-strip light with two seperate switches and plugs for each tube, then I suggest keeping one of them on a seperate timer, so that one tube goes on in the morning, and a few hours later the other one comes on for a few hours in the afternoon, then goes off after 3-4 hours, then just have one tube on for the rest of the day. This best simulates a natural daylight cycle.
If you do notice algae starting, it means that your plants aren't getting something they need to thrive. You might increase your nitrogen, decrease your phosphorus, and increase the Excel. Whatever you do, DON'T stop dosing your fertilizers or your plants will fail and algae will completely take over.
Some good plants to start with are crypts, Ludwigia, anubias, bacopa, vals, java fern, and java moss.
www.tropica.com is a good place to research different varieties of plants and their needs.
