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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.
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hey i love this post. thank you for the awesome information.
it’s always a problem for me since i can’t seem to decide if i should keep the light on or not.
I’ve always been an enthusiast so these things you talk about should help me move forward and finally do things right.
more power to you and your blog Penelope
Excellent tutorial, but you didn’t mention that you need to have the light off during the night as fish need darkness too.
hi there! thanks for the comment and i did forget that part. I’ll be sure to add it in my next post!
Excellent. I’ll keep comming back. This is a great blog.
great post. Will subscribe to your RSS and mailing list.
this is a cool up and coming blog. will be exciting to see it grow
great post, and great blog, will keep coming back
I run 2 metal halide (10k and actinic) and a set of LED’s, just for showcasing the tank. The LED’s don’t provide enough light to support the tank, (just yet, they are too expensive!) but they do look neat on the soft corals. I run the metal halides for about 12 hours a day…
I buy all my Aquarium Lighting Supplies from Direct Aquarium. They sell the 10k and actinic halides I use for cheaper than I have found anywhere else. You guys should check them out