FishProfiles.com Message Forums

If I leave my tank lights on 24/7, will I be able to make my plants grow faster? I have amazon swords and java fern in a 20 gallon long with a 20 watt bulb

No. Beyond 12hrs of light you don't really gain anything and I'm sure 24hrs would be detrimental since plants respond even more to the light and dark cycle than fish. Also if you have any fish they won't survive 24hrs of light for even 1 week.

I'm sure Bensaf would come in and talk about an imbalance of nutrients, of which that much light certainly is. However, I'll argue the other way - if you have any fish in the tank I would strongly advise against doing that. I accidentally forgot to turn the lights off when I was gone for a weekend and the fish were stressed beyond belief. I've done that once and will never do that again (I now run timers on all my tanks).

Even if it's a plant only tank, The plants won't benefit any. In fact it's detrimental. They need a dormancy period which is vital to growth.

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Plants consume nutrients (light, co2, etc) during the day... this is when "photosynthesis" happens and they make food (glucose I think?)

At night, the plants use all of the food they've made during the day, and they acutally grow.

Plants ain't gonna grow if the lights are on all day

Bensaf or somebody might be able to give a more detailed answer

Good grief, no, never.

Everyones already covered it.

It's a recipe for a green water mess.

Incredibly stressful on fish.

Plants will suffer.

All in all a real bad idea.

Ever notice near the end of the normal lighting period the plants "close up shop" for the day ? The leaves curl upwards like they are closing. They need the hours of darkness. The whole process switches over , the sugars gluscoses etc produced during the photosynthesis period are put to use. The plant switches to producing Co2 instead of O2 .Most of the growth is done during this period.

Think of the lighting period as the plants building up a good head of steam (this is why you see pearling towards the end of the day) before getting down to serious work in the darkness period.

You can't "fool" a plant into growing faster then it's naturally capable of. It's not going to happen. You can optimize plant growth and health by providing suffcient amounts of light/co2/nutrients , but even that has a limit. With a pressurized Co2 system it's amlost as easy to add 50ppm of Co2 as 30ppm, but it's pointless as after about 40ppm the plants don't have the capacity to utilize the rest of the Co2. The same holds true for nutrients, beyond a certain point the plant can't uptake further and they sit in the water until the next water change. Missing or bottoming out of one of the components and everything pretty much grinds to halt.

Many people think just by going out and buiying a bottle of liquid fert that growth will explode. It won't.

Patience will give you a far better reward.

---

Some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue.

Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability.

Get some excel, if you don't already use it. Just make sure you compliment the excel with the appropriate ferts. It really does increase growth quite a bit in low light tanks.

hehehe

"Dude, you're gettin' Excel" :%)

(sorry it popped into my head )

[/font]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention there are no fish in there ATM. I have liquid ferts. (will the filter suck them up)
In that case, I won't leave the lights on more than 12 hours.

No, the filter won't suck them up.

Without any fish you'll NEED to dose some nitrate and phosphate. You should even if you have fish but without them fertilization is way more important. Your plants will grow much faster with the right nutrition.

What kind of liquid ferts?



Last edited by trystianity at 06-Sep-2005 19:16[/font]