Lighting

[_]im]

Hi,

I was wondering if its good to set up a normal time of turning the aquarium light on/off for the fish? I also have nautral plants in the tank and was wondering if having the lights off at night would hurt them?

Thanks

 

[Kitt_81]

Hi - no of course it won't. You should automatically get into a habit of this as it represents the time length of light they'd get in their natural enviroment.

If you leave the lights on all the time your plants will grow like wildfire and you'll get more algae than normal plus your fishies natural circadian rhythm will be thrown out of sync, alot of species are nocturnal and tend to feed/be active after the sun goes down/comes up (dusk/dawn). They'll get stressed/nervous in a majorly bad way I mean lets face it you'd feel pretty f**ked up yourself if it never got dark wouldn't you

hope this helps

 

[_]im]

thanks for the help

 

[clutterydrawer]

I think if you leave the lights on 24/7 the plants will die. Tehy need a dark period to grow properly. About 12 hours per day should suffice.

 

[Kitt_81]

No probs we all gotta start somewhere.

 

[bigphesta]

this is my problem. I want to see my fish when I'm up and about and when that is is from 9pm to 2am. So I have my lights on when I get up at 10 then they stay on till 2am. There's only about 4 hours of true darkness for them.

 

[yhbae]

That should be ok - in fact one of my tank has near identical timing as yours and it has been thriving (including plants) for the past year or so...

 

[clutterydrawer]

If you're worried about it...change the hours when the lights are on!

If the problem is that you are out part of the day, you can get a timer for about £4 which turn the lights on/off whenever you want.