Fish tank - light on all night?

[maggiso]

We inherited a little fish and a tank, from emigrating neighbours. We used to feed it when they were away. The tank is the sort with a light, but the light was not working. We and fish managed fine without ithe light but DH has just got it working again. My question is should the light be on all 24 hours or should I buy a timer to give the fish a night time? I can’t seem to find out on line. The bulb is low energy cool sort so is not warming the water.I don’t know what sort of fish it is - it’s not a tropical fish - originally there were 5 in a little shoal, but by the time it came to us only one was left. It’s thin and silvery., with black eyes. I probably should buy it some companion fish.

Nope, turn off at night.

Make sure you take expert advice on getting any additional fish re both type and tank space.

Ooh I’m interested in this too

Tank needs to have a day and night, I tend to turn mine on when I get up say 7am and then turn it off about 7pm.

I have on occasions forgotten to turn the lights off at night so they've had a long long 'day'.

And yes, buy more fish for the tank. One fish on its own is not great.

Thank you Brie and User. The tank is only about 20 litres so small. I’ll look into getting some new fish.

Post a pic and we can identify the fish. It could be a wee Tetra and they like to be kept on shoals.

Light off at night or you'll end up with algae.

My tropical tank has a bright yellow light and a blue light. I only have the bright light on for a couple of hours in the evening, and the blue light on after that until I go to bed. I don't have any light on apart from that.

I still have more algae than I'd like. As a poster above said, light promotes algae growth. Having a bright light on all the time is like having the midday sun shining on the tank all the time and isn't natural for the fish.

Hair algae is truly awful. Try salt scrubbing it off and adding a few emails. It's the only thing that helped my tank.

How do you mean, salt scrubbing? And I presume you mean snails!

Is it a Danilo fish? It definitely needs some friends in that case they need to be in at least 3s.
Fine to switch the light off at night.

Sorry typo DANIO fish

LOL at adding emails!!!

Thank you Frazzled, I think you might be right- a pearly Danio fish. He is a jolly little fish and I’ve just discovered he likes the filter pump up a bit higher ( I forgot to reduce the filter flow after the filter change) - he is happily swimming up and down through the bubble stream ( he usually prefers the other end of the tank) Who knew fish liked jacuzzis! Having read a little about danios, I suspect fish is a she.

Hope you got a few more .. he'll be very lonely alone as they should be in a shoal.

Fish need to have a day and night

Yeah, why not!

I used to leave the light on at night, I don't know if that's right, but my fish didn't care. But once when my friend read the information about sea worms here ARC Reef . Then he immediately wanted one of them, and he bought it for himself. So at night he was somehow unusually swimming, especially in this light. Well, I decided to take one for myself, and I did not lose, they get along very well with fish and never attack them.