[Wallywonka]

gang,

i may be looking a little too deep into this, but i sometimes I worry about weird things.
ok so here we go.. my fish go into complete darkness around 7-8 pm. since the tank is in my bedroom, sometime ... more than i would like, my wife goes into the room and turns ALL the lights on. it urks me because i really want to keep in line with creating a real environment for my fish, down to making sure that the light and dark cycle is consistent. so my questions is what do other people do about this? is this shocking to fish to go sometimes go from dark to light and back to dark again?

wifey and I are thinking about getting a tv in the bedroom.. this will mean light in the room later into the current dark cycle? show i look at wrapping the tank in a mini curtain so that it stays some want dark?

 

[radioman]

I really wouldn't worry about this. Most of the members here have tanks that are in areas where we will eventually have to tun the lights on and from my experience, and I'm sure from others, this is not a big deal and I would't wrap the tank. Just think of the tv as moonlight for the fish

 

[kuni]

Depends a lot on the fish. If you have wild-caught reef fish and they're not mostly-brainless schooling types, I suspect they notice and get stressed out. I'm in a fish lab, and the fish that usually get startled as the more intelligent, wild-caught ones. Things like zebrafish don't really care.

Test it out yourself - turn on the lights suddenly at night and see how your fish react. If you see lots of jumping and freaking out, then yes, it's stressful.

I doubt the TV will be a problem, though. Some nights on reefs are darker than others.