Fish sleeping habits/artificial light/wintertime/etc. ?
Question by : Fish sleeping habits/artificial light/wintertime/etc. ?
I keep a siamese fighting fish in a small tank. It’s wintertime now, and it gets pretty cold at my house overnight…so I turn on the lamp light of the tank and leave it on until morning. I’m wondering if this is the right thing to do, in order to keep the fish warm overnight. I’m a bit worried that it would mess up the fish’s sleeping habits because of the perceived daylight and all that. Any tips/suggestions/criticisms? Thanks very much.
Best answer:
Answer by Monster Fish Keeper
Fish do need some time to rest, the best thing you could do is to get a little heater for you tank, this will help keep the temperature stable and allow you to turn the light off at night.
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Your fish light really should only be on 8 to 12 hours a day, for the health of the fish. To solve the heating problem, you should absolutely not leave the light on, but instead invest in a simple thermometer and a small fish tank heater.
Because the Beta originated in a warm climate, Betas do not enjoy being cold. Your Beta will most likely consider your home’s room temperature too cold. I suggest investing in an inexpensive aquarium thermometer. A stick-on thermometer will do. You may want to consider placing a small heater in your Beta tank or placing your Beta’s bowl in a warm area of your home. Your beta will sit clamped and lifeless in a huddle near the bottom of his tank when he is too cold. Beta’s enjoy a water temperature in the mid 70 degrees.
Wikipedia says the water must be 76-85 degrees for your fish. “Pretty cold” at your house probably means 55-60 (I hope not lower than that!). That means about 20-25 degrees of heating. For a 5 gallon tank, you may need a 60-75 watt heater, and at 20 gallons, you may want a 100-125 watt heater.
I’m sure your aquarium light is not using this much energy, and it certainly will not convert all this energy to heat added directly to the water, so you can’t possibly keep the water in the aquarium warm enough.
It’s probably best to just get an automatic aquarium heater with a thermostat (rather than just a continuous-on aquarium heater); search for a product with terms “temperature aquarium heater” or just call and go to your favorite pet shop. Get a higher wattage than what I listed above, to be safe at varying temperatures; see the first link below. These heaters start at around $ 20.
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Some Bad Ideas:
Let’s say you ignore these facts about your aquarium light:
– it is not using enough energy
– it is not converting all this energy to heat
– most of its heat does not end up in the water
Here are some bad ideas I can come up with:
1. Just use the light
You got to let your fish sleep.
2. Cover up your light bulb with aluminum foil.
You can’t really cover your lamps; they would heat up too much.
Incandescent light bulbs convert about 90-95% of energy to heat, and convert only about 5% to light. But hot air would rise, and light bulb at top would not heat up water under it too much, unless it is very close and heat reflects from above the light bulb.
Most of the heat would come through radiation (rather than convection). If you put some aluminum foil under the light bulb, now you would be reflecting the radiation back up where it would burn the light bulb and top of your aquarium.
Fluorescent light bulbs may fare better, but at similar wattage, the dissipated heat is still high.
3. Cover it up with something else.
If you covered your light bulb with something opaque, you would trap radiation and heat, as well as light. Incandescent light bulbs can get as hot as 550 F on their surface (or higher; tungsten filament inside may be 2800 K = 4600 F; see top and bottom of section in the second link); you don’t want to start a fire.
Fluorescent lights run cooler, but will again not be happy heating up, and could also start a fire.
4. Paint your light bulb black
Don’t even think of painting the light bulb black unless you want toxic fumes. Do you know of any paint that can withstand such high temperatures?