Blacklight Aquarium

your experiment doesnt seem like it would be an accurate study being that the key is LONG term damage. Long term may be months, by which time you will have gotten bored with your tank of goldfish, (I know I would). Besides, the effects will not be noticable by observation. In fact the only real way to see the damage would be with an extensive observation of the removed eye vs. a normal eye. gross and rather trivial in my opinion. If you like the look keep it, know that you ARE probably harming the fishs' sight but also know that they can survive and even thrive as such. I dont consider it any worse that cycling a tank with fish, or keeping a big fish in a small tank, or subjecting a fish to abusive tank mates, or taking a fish from the wild and sticking it in a glass box. my 2 cents :cool:

ryan
 
Hey Ryan, on your list you forgot: breeding fish in glass boxes and keeping all the fry in glass boxes for the rest of their lives despite their natural instincts, and they never get to live free in their natural environment. As far as removing fish from the wild, I'm sure every aquarists has had at least one wild fish, especially marine aquarists simply because breeding fish in mass quantities can be difficult and possibly cost inefficient regarding some species.

I welcome your criticism though, and anyone elses. You bring up a good point. Observation alone cannot measure the full extent of possible damage to the fishs' eyes. Only comparing a possibly damaged eye with a control, which would be an eye not exposed to the blacklight. But I'm not an Ichthyologist, nor do I have the equipment to perform such a thurough examination (several thousand dollars for a dissecting microscope draws the line between a hobby and a profession); so my observations will have to suffice for this "amateur experiment."

Another good point you bring up is the deffinition of "long term." Since I'm only using the goldfish to cycle the tank (and there is only about two weeks left), I've been using the blacklight as the only source of light in the tank, instead of only at night (I hope you've read the rest of the thread) to simulate a long term ammount of time. But I concede that even this is not enough to see (as I put it earlier) "concrete" results. So I will be extending the length of time I keep the goldfish by 2 months.

Let's just try to keep in mind that the only reason I'm even doing this is so that instead of saying "you ARE probably harming the fishs' sight", we can say "you ARE deffinitely" or "deffinitely NOT" harming the fishs' eyesight. :D
 
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You misinterpret my critisism. I currently own 25 wild caught fish, I keep target fish, I do all of the things i commented on, which is exactly the point. While we like to make life for our fish pleasant, at the end of the day keeping them is entirely for our amusement, and the welfare of the fish always, even in the most concious fish keepers tank, takes a back seat to human fancy. which brings me to my point...

If you like the blacklight, then keep it. The fish will not die from it, while they may not enjoy it as much (probably as much because blacklights are never experienced in a natural situation as the side effects therein). they will most likely live to the full aquarium age without any noticable outward side effects.

...and who knows, maybe all that UV will fend off parasites

ryan

:edit: my only actual critisism was of the experiment, which i hold to be more constructive than wholely negative, at least that was the intention. Being (unfortunatly) a student of statistics I tend to point out bias experiment designs. But, SoCal has already addressed the weaknesses of the experiment, and will continue. Which is fine, and I wish him luck, I just don't think there will be anything to observe.

But hey, who knows right? Maybe he will find something and I can give a concrete answer instead of a blanket "May harm fish eyes" when people come into work wanting to put a blacklight in their tank.
 
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Um, the UV coming off a blacklight is the the same as any fluorescent light, the blacklight just uses a special coating to take out the rest of the lighting spectrum. So no, blacklights are not dangerous.
 
Amazing link Slipknottin, thanks!:D The UVA/UVB part said exactly what I was looking for. So much for my experiment:rolleyes: . But at least now I can tell whoever asks, that blacklights will not harm a fish's vision when used on an aquarium. Thanks again Slipknottin.
 
I'm going to post the pics of the blacklight tanks in a new thread so that they get more views, thanks for all the help and replies, I'm pretty confident, with slipknottin's major contribution, that the blacklight does not harm fishes eyes.

From the source that slipknottin provided, I learned that blacklights emit UVB light and not UVA (the harmful stuff that damages eyes).

So spread the knowledge! Blacklights DO NOT harm fish's eyes. We have proof.
 
hmm, very good to know, i might have to start pushing the glow in the dark aquarium plants and blacklights at work now :D

ryan
 
Im happy to have found this thread from a google search of "neon tetra" and blacklight :)

I am about to move my 2 neon tetras from my community tank to another tank and add another 8. I have always loved the black gravel with a slight mix of neon stones in it and as I have been thinking about this I was thinking the same thought as SoCal... it would be great to have all neon decorations and then have a black light to bring out that color. I was only concerned about the fish's health and thanks to this thread, I have my answer.

I guess my only question is is there a certain type of aquarium hood that I should purchase for my tank to accomodate a blacklight? I have a standard 10 gallon and need to purchase a hood for it anyway.

Thanks for all of your input... I am not a member of this forum and I'm looking forward to sharing my (little) knowledge of fish and reading other's.
 
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