Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fish Tanks and Equipment => Topic started by: Manjr on April 14, 2016, 03:39:48 PM
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I have recently completed a fishless cycle on my tank, the tank is 70l x 31w x 39 d and has been planted for two weeks and all the plants are growing well, they are stem and substrate planted plants, not sure of names they were a job lot. Whilst I'm not looking to aquascape my tank to any great degree I don't want to kill the plants or create algae. The lighting is an Interpet triple bright white LED and a separate Interpet single blue LED. Both these lights are on timers, the white 12:30-22:30 and the blue 11:00-23:30 to try and reduce the sudden day/night effect by using the blue single to simulate moonlight. Are the timings I'm using along the right lines or should I be doing things differently. I'm an early riser so would prefer a longer "viewing time" but don't want to cause any problems with the fish or plants.
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The answer is down to trial and error and personal preference as much as anything, however as you have live plants they do need to photosynthesise in order to thrive.
In nature plants will probably receive on average about 10 - 12 hours of light, but how much depends on the species and where it grows.
How long your lights are on, to give your plants maximum benefit, will also depend on the intensity (brightness).
Less intense lighting should probably be on for longer than more intense lighting.
For what it's worth, my lights are medium-ish intensity and are on the following cycle:
6am the blue light comes on at 1% brightness and gradually fades up to 100% by 7am
7am the white light comes on at 1% brightness and gradually fades up to 100% by 8:30 am, the blue light fades down to 50% over the same period.
6:30pm the white light fades down to 5% by 7:30pm, whilst the blue light fades up gradually to 100%
9:30 the blue light and white light both fade down to 0% over the course of the hour with total darkness (not counting ambient light in the room) at 10:30pm
Simply put, there's about 10hours of light with about an hour of blue beforehand in the morning, and about 3 hours of blue light in the evening afterwards.
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A "siesta" is a good idea, when the lights are on in the morning, go off for several hours during the day, then come back on again at night.
Algae will not become a major problem from light alone so long as your plants grow strongly. It's the combination of high nutrient levels (often phosphate) AND light. But all tanks have some algae, they are inevitable in any freshwater system, from a large lake to a puddle, it's how much and how concerned you are about it that counts.