blacklight

oscar83

oscar83

AC Members
May 21, 2004
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Middletown, NJ
kind of a strange question here... i want to set up a cool looking "night time" effect when i turn the lights out in my tank for the night. would it be safe to use blacklights to get that effect, or could the uv damage the fishes eyes or anything like that. thanks in advance.
 
Hey Oscar
I wanted to do the same thing for my 6'er and was told the best way and most cost effective method was to use a 3' or 4' single coral blue light turned on at night. I have seen this type of setup and boy is it good.
I was told that blacklights are not so good unless u have alot of white coloured items or fish inside the tank.

Cheers
Nick
 
Unnatural looking lights (spacifically black lights) are stressful on most fish. I have seen the effects of black lights and they really bother the majority of fish in the long run. Fish should have dark at night, just like we should.

Would you like to sleep with a black light on? :D
 
just as a side note and, from personal experience, fish go freakin' Crazy with a black light. The all swim to it and just go nuts! Just thought i'd be fun to tell yuou that
 
I had posted about this a long time ago. You can use the blacklights without any adverse affects on the fish because blacklights use UV-a and not UV-b light or something like that. But your fish will need some dark period. I used to have a blacklight tank, but I got bored with it because you can't buy GloFish in Cali. Here's a pic of the old tank:

Lights off:
DSC02826.JPG



Lights on:
DSC02828.JPG
 
As you can tell by the pics, I have experience with using blacklights too. I kept goldfish at first, then I switched to platies later on and they never displayed any distressed behavior at all. Maybe my fish weren't scaredy fish?:confused:

I would like to know what your previous experiences were, aquariumfishguy and vato. Setup? Fish? Type of blacklight? (incandescent or flourescent). What was the ammount of time you kept the light on per day, or week, or whatever. :D
 
i dont plan on leaving the light on all nite. i just wanna use the blacklight so i can watch my fish at nite and its still dark for them, but i can see them, u know? when i go to bed i'll turn out the light. and yeah, ive been using the blacklight for a day and my fish do go crazy! especially my irr. shark, but hey, its good exercise, right? haha. so im guessing it would be fairly safe to use for a few hours a day, right?
 
If they continue to go berserk whenever the light is on, then no you shouldn't use it. Some fish will react in different ways... if your fish cannot handle it and are jumpy, nippy, or just bump around when the light is on then you should not use it.
 
the light that I used was a flouresent bulb, and I had it on for about 2 hours after dusk(on a timer), they seemed to always go crazy so after about 2 weeks I took the thing off. It was set up in a 33 gallon community tank, at first I did it because the fish got really active, and I could watch them as I fell asleep (I don't know how watching fish run around a tank like little speed devils helped me sleep at all). After a while I realized that my fish could get hurt so I took it off. I have heard however of people having them on their tanks in the day in combination with other lights to help accent the lighter colors in the tank.
 
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