Are Fish Tank Lights As Complicated As The Experts Make Them?

I suppose the short answer to that is a resounding no. The long answer probably revolves around watts per gallon and light spectrums and uses words like halogen and fluorescent and daylight, blue light , white light etc.

If you are keeping freshwater tropical fish in a tank that has artificial plants in then all you need is the standard fluorescent tubes that most aquarium manufacturers put in at the factory. After all they are hardly likely to sell you something that doesn’t do the job for the simple reason that they rely heavily on their reputation as experts in the field.

Do you need extra lights to grow plants? Well that all depends on what plants you intend to grow. Most of the plants that you can but in aquarium stores, off the shelf, (out of the tank) will be perfectly happy with the standard lamps provided in most off the shelf aquariums. Don’t forget that your room is going to provide a certain amount of light to start off with, add in the standard fluorescents and you probably have enough for your needs.

Try it and see what happens. If the plants aren’t thriving then add some reflectors before you start adding extra lights. It may be enough to do the trick at a fraction of the cost.

Extra lighting really only becomes essential when you start growing more exotic plants or decide to get your self a really deep aquarium. I think the problem with a lot of experts is that they forget their roots. By the time they have been keeping fish for a few years they have moved onto the difficult to keep fish and plants and think of everything as a problem solving exercise.

My philosophy tends to revolve around if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. Put too much light in your new aquarium and you are more likely to grow algae successfully than plants. Your plants might love it but it will be hard to tell if you can’t see them because of the algae blooms or the hair algae covering their leaves.

The only thing I would say about lights is do replace them before they stop working. Fluorescent lights have a nasty habit of getting lazy as they get older so it’s worth investing in new ones every six to eight months just to keep things bright.

That may be a good time to try out a tropical tube to enhance the colour of your fish but stick to the same wattage as your old one.

And if you get the bug and want to try different plants just remember that like fish, plants all like different conditions. Think carefully before you get something that needs a lot of light if the rest of your plants don’t because you are setting off down a very slippery slope with nothing but problems at the bottom.

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