Readers Questions: Lighting advice for a new keeper

hi i am a new to fish keeping , i have got 8 fish in my tank got 6 tetras 2 zebra danois wanted to know as the fish live in the tank can i switch off the lights to give them a rest then put it on in the morning will this make a diffrence to them

First up no the fish don’t depend on the light at all with a few exceptions they’d be perfectly happy with just the natural sunlight they get.  Unless you run a heavily planted tank I’d only leave your lights on for a max of 3-4 hours in an evening when it gets darker.  If you run them all day/night not only is it costing you a fortune in energy but the fish are getting no rest period ie: night and you’re massively increasing your chances of having to deal with green water or an algae bloom.

Rule of thumb don’t turn the lights on before 5pm 🙂 and turn them off by 10pm.  I have mine on timers to achieve this.

2 thoughts on “Readers Questions: Lighting advice for a new keeper”

  1. I have inherited an aquarium and one of the fish is a gourami who is attacking the other fish and has killed one of same species any thing I can do to stop him killing the remaining fish?

    1. Some gourami’s can be aggressive tanks that are too small for them seem to make them even worse. I’ve not got too much experience with them however my mum has had them for many years when she got an aggressive one there was nothing that seemed to calm it down she ended up splitting them up

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