Lighting Duration in Freshwater Fish Tanks

One of your main questions when you have a freshwater fish tank is how long you should leave the light on for. In some cases, people decide to leave the light on from the time that they get up all the way until they decide to go to bed. I was leaving my light on for about 13 hours a day.

I was having a lot of problems with my tank, my tank was dirty and it was cloudy as well. I thought I was doing the right thing by leaving my light on for 13 hours. I wanted to be able to see my fish and I thought like myself, my fish get upset and depressed when it's time to shut the lights off and go to bed. I was not helping out the fish, I was creating problems.

When you have a freshwater fish tank you will only want to keep the light on for a certain amount of time. If you keep the light on for longer, you will develop a horrible algae problem in your fish tank. Light promotes algae growth.

You want you fish to get a good amount of light but you don't want the water levels to start going haywire because you're leaving your light on for too long. Often times, when you leave the light on for too long you will actually start to heat up the water in your fish tank. You will want to keep your light on for the least amount of time possible.

The general rule when it comes to fish tanks is that you want to keep the light on for around 6 hours but not any longer. Turn on the light when you get home from work and shut the light off before you go to bed. Don't leave the light on when you're gone because you're just hurting the water quality. Turn the light on when you get home so that you can enjoy the fish tank. There's no reason that the light needs to be on when you are not home.

It's very important to make sure that your fish get enough light but not too much. You don't want to leave your light on for 10 hours every single day. This will stress out your fish because the water in changing in temperature. You want to leave the light on for a good amount of time but you don't want to leave it on for more than 8 hours. You can purchase a timer that will make your light come on and off at a certain time through out the day. This way you don't have to worry about your light being on for too long or not coming on at all.