Getting the proper amounts and types of lighting in your fish tank is vital to the health of your fish and plants. Even though your fish are in an aquarium inside your home, they still need to experience light as they would in nature so you want to be sure to provide around 12 hours of light a day. Consider using a timer so that you can consistently light the tank, inconsistent lighting may stress your fish which can lead to health problems.
Although most aquarium setups come with hoods that have lights fitted right into them, you can also purchase different types of fish tank lighting to suit your needs. Most beginning aquarists need only to use the lighting that is provided with the aquarium as long as it is flourescent lighting and your tank is for fresh water fish only.
If you want your fish to be their happiest, you should use flourescent lighting. This lighting resembles natural light more closely than incandescent and it will also show off the colors of your fish better. Incandescent lighting also has the drawback of throwing off a lot of heat which can cause the water in your aquarium to become to hot which can harm your fish. If your current setup has an incandescent light you should be able to easily change the bulb out and replace it with flourescent.
For a fish only tank, it is recommended that you have 3 watts of lighting for each gallon of water the tank holds. This ratio can be important when it comes to algae control and if you notice ...
3 comments:
Lighting is definitely an important factor in aquarium keeping, especially as to FW planted aquariums and marine aquariums.
However with lighting technology growing at such a rapid rate, many terms such as watts per gallon are but generalizations any more.
One needs to consider lumens per watt, PAR, and Kelvins.
It should be noted that the aquarium hobby tends to be rather anecdotal passing around the same outdated information. An example would be how many so called experts are not even familiar with T2 lights (which are vastly superior to T5) or SHO lights. It is important for any serious aquarist looking to up grade lighting to get as many up to date facts as possible.
I would strongly recommend any readers here to read this article that is VERY current as to aquarium lighting information:
Aquarium Lighting
Hi Author
I have many fish. Thanks for this informative post.
What are your thoughts on the latest LED Lights. I understand Philips are launching a range soon and was wondering how they may impact upon health of the fish? Do you have any preferences?
Thanks for a great site in advance
Tim
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