General Care Discussion :: Night Time?

[Adora4Him]

I need to know if what I'm doing is wrong. I run 2 white light bulbs from 5:00 am to 9:00 pm and then use 2 red light bulbs. There is algae in the tank, but my pleco eats it. Should I stop using the red lights at night? Also, we are going on vacation for 6 days. I was thinking about putting some rosy red minnows in the tank and just leaving the light on the whole time.

[Nettle]

The red lights are unnecessary. Most turts stay in the water when they sleep, so they're plenty warm.

Leaving the lights on all the time will throw off their system (imagine if the sun stayed out 24 hours; you'd be pretty messed up).

You can either try to have someone turn off the lights for you or get a timer that turns it off automatically. (link below)

http://petco.com/product/100385/Marinel ... Timer.aspx

Also, they should have lights on for twelve hours a day similar to the sunrise/sunset in your area. For me it's lights on at 8a and off at 8p.