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Can you have too much light?


Can you have too much light?

I don't think so. Nearly all aquarium plants grow in full sunlight in the tropics. But, if you do want to cut down on light here's a couple of things you could do.

Somebody asked what to do with an old marine/reef setup that had an ungodly huge metal halide bulb that they now wanted to use for a freshwater planted tank. Here's what I wrote:

There's all sorts of ways to deal with that much light.

Grow nothing but very light intensive plants in the tank, whether they're glosso, or lillies that presumably will bloom under that light (although letting the tank get some sunlight would help) or water lettuce on the surface.

If you just want the tank darker use lilies: their leaves will block out 80% of the light. If you want to raise hundreds of Ps. annulatus then use water lettuce - the roots might be unsighly to us but it's a dessert buffet to baby fish especially small top feeding ones like Epiplatys.

If you had the light 3 or 4 feet above the top of the tank you could grow papyrus in the tank too. It would grow about 2' above for the frilly one and 3-4' above for the regular papyrus. And you could make your own paper if you wanted.

Yeah, that's what I'd do. Some papyrus at the back, water lettuce or an exotic large Salvania and a bunch of PS. anulatus, preferably the Monrovia (Harbel) form with the solid red pectorals.

The papyrus would cut down on a lot of light getting into the tank and would also suck nutrients out of the water very quicky.

You could even use terrestrial plants sitting under the light to take some away from the tank.

I've grown the regular papyrus for ages here and just recently got a small bit of the frilly stuff which is dying to take over a corner of a tank:





Mongabay Biotopes
Shrimp
Oliver Knott's Planted Tank Pages
AGA Aquascaping Tanks
Chuck Gadd's Planted Tank Pages
FINS:APD,Killitalk
Tropica Aquatic Nursury in Denmark
Cryptocorynes
The Krib, home of the *.aquaria FAQs
Plant Geek
Plant Geek
Planted Tank
Hoa Nguyen Low-Tech Tanks
Wet Web Media
The Barr Report

Killifish
Cryptocorynes
Apple snails - Applesnail.NET
Catfish - Planet Catfish
FINS:APD:Killitalk
Rainbowfish - Home of the Rainbowfish
Fish Species - Fishbase
Plant Species - Tropica, Denmark
The Krib
Loaches - Loaches.COM
Cichlids - Cichlids.COM