Effect Of Light On My Fish!

[SamLovesCorys]

I turned out the lights in order to take the lid off my aquarium today, and my cories and male thicklip gourami were hiding. When I looked again 5 minutes later they were all out and about, being very active!

Is this normal behaviour? Should my lighting be dimmer?

Thanks, Sam

 

[SamLovesCorys]

bump!

 

[Cazgar]

Some fish are more active when it's dark, I find my peppered corys come out more at night, whereas my sanchesi are active all day long

 

[tomtomtom1230]

Cories prefer murkier, darker conditions since they spend most of their time at the bottom of whatever expanse of water they live in in the wild, and some catfish species are even nocturnal.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome Sam. I find you fish's reaction completely normal. As others have already said, many fish are "shy" and do better when their light is low. That is not a reason to reduce lighting IMO. Instead those fish will learn over time that lights on mean things like feeding time and they will grow to like lights being on.

 

[fluttermoth]

OldMan is, as usual, quite right. If I have any fish known to be 'shy', I make a point of feeding them little and often, whenever I do something to the tank.

So, I always feed my tanks as soon as the lights go on; they soon learn that light = food, and all come rushing up as soon as I flick the switch!

Right now I have some new dwarf emerald rasboras, which are famously very nervous fish, so I'm keeping a cup of 'scraped' (off a block of frozen, so it's very fine) brine shrimp or daphnia next to the tank. Every time I sit in front of the tank, turn the light on, or even just walk past, I stop and add a little drop of food. I've had them since Friday (I obviously didn't feed them the first day!) and they're already coming to the front of the tank when they see me.

It doesn't work for every fish (yes, I'm looking at you, clown plec!), but a bit of good old Pavlovian conditioning never goes amiss