Fish afraid of the lights

[Cococalm]

I would be inclined to suggest to you to add some floating plants and to have a "timed/progressive" lights on. I had 3 Trichogasters that would freak out when the lights would come on, swim into the tank walls or try to jump out and hit the lights and lid.

I added floating plants, quite a lot ( but not black out ), and having 4 fluorescent tubes, I put each tube on a different timer to progressively bring the tank to daylight over a tube lighting every 20 minutes. - ( Same for sun down . ). I progressively removed the floating plants - over a period of 3 months - to leave only few and now all is coolios.

 

[Mark Hewitt]

The other thing I'm considering is reflectors? Those reflectors you buy separately presumably just clip directly onto the tube itself? So is there anything to stop me mounting it *under* the tube so it blocks out all the direct light?

There would still be plenty of light reflected from the underside of the hood, just hopefully a bit more diffuse and less scary to the fish!

 

[Mark Hewitt]

It's a bit hard to make out in that photo. But what I've done as I suggested above is to get a reflector and this has been mounted directly underneath and over the front of the tube, so the tank now gets no direct light from the tube. Instead it gets light reflected off the underside of the hood as below

The Black Skirts and Rummy noses still don't like it but they've already after a few hours started to venture out a little, but still look scared! But I can't reduce the lighting any further as it's already quite dim! I'm sure it's just a matter of them getting used to the new lighting arrangements.

 

[Cococalm]

The effect that floating plants gives in the tank is that it "DAPPLES" the light, just as it would in nature when sun shines through trees onto the river ..... with water movement, the plants move about on the surface constantly changing the light intensities which is what the fish look for. If you start with quite a bit of dappled light to begin, you can progressively reduce it until you have the effect you want and at the same time get the fish accustomed to the progressive changes.

 

[Mark Hewitt]

The effect that floating plants gives in the tank is that it "DAPPLES" the light, just as it would in nature when sun shines through trees onto the river ..... with water movement, the plants move about on the surface constantly changing the light intensities which is what the fish look for. If you start with quite a bit of dappled light to begin, you can progressively reduce it until you have the effect you want and at the same time get the fish accustomed to the progressive changes.

I've already got a couple of floating plants in there, and hope to get some more in the near future. Although I've been warned not to spend any more money on the fish tank

 

[Cococalm]

hehehe ... I understand .... Being restricted myself, I exchanged for the plants I got ... etc .... but I did get a whole lot from people who were stopping their setups or changed to marine. I recouped their tanks and fish for free .... so I did not get into trouble ...... I set myself up as well as 2 neighbors for free in this manner