How long to keep your Aquarium Lights on?

Sponsors That Keep Fish Tank Pet Alive:

People always ask me this question “how long should we keep the fish tank lighting on?” Although there is no one for all rule, like what I’ve written in previous articles, I’ve tried my best to come up with a set of guidelines or general rules of thumb here. So here goes:

• depending on the fish it can range from 8-12 hours, a good approximation would be 10hours
• some fish thrive on low light environments and it is possible to reduce or even completely remove the aquarium lighting if the room where the fish tank is located has enough ambient lighting
• some aquarium plants need a lot of light to grow. You might need to increase the fish tank lighting to as much as 12 hours a day if they do need it for photosynthesis
• if you are having algae growth problems, reducing the duration of time the fish tank light is on might help to control reduce its growth rate
• a quick check to know if your aquarium lighting is just right is to check if plants are growing and algae growth is not out of control
• using a timer is a great way to automatically control how long your fish tank gets lighting

**all of the above are still ultimately dependent on the aquarium setup, species of fish, species of plants, corals or reefs and your room ambient lighting.