Unique Lighting Question

[hyperdog882]

Hi all! I have an interesting potential issue and wanted to see if anyone had ideas.

I'm going to be moving and will not have room in the new place for my 75 gallon tank. However, I work at a vet clinic and we have a perfect spot in our lobby for it. My boss is thrilled at having it there so I'll still get to enjoy it. The issue is that it's a 24/7 clinic so the lights are always on in the lobby. The lights that I have for the tank are working great and already have a built in timer but I don't want it to develop crazy algae from having the extra lighting overnight. Has anyone dealt with a similar issue? Did it go OK- am I overthinling it (I do that!)?

I was brainstorming and wondered if I could rig up a curtain track around the rim so the fish could have the curtain pulled overnight and get a little.break. The issue with that is that I don't trust the overnight staff to pull it every day but I leave too early to pull it. Has anyone ever found/rigged up an automatic curtain puller? I've seen the ones for regular window curtains but they don't look like they'd be able to navigate the corners.

Any thoughts/ideas appreciated! And thanks for reading my novel if you made it this far!

 

[Andy Sager]

Interesting problem for sure. A couple of potential solutions:
If you can situate the tank in a way where the back side would be against a dark wall or you use a dark background on the back and do the decorations so that there is somewhat of a wall of solid decor down the middle of the tank, your fish, freshwater or saltwater, will most likely have enough darkness to sleep when the overhead light goes out. Considering that with the exception of the new moon phase, there is always some light in the sky at night s the fish don't need 100% darkness to sleep.
If the overhead lighting fixtures for the office are multi bulb fixtures, can you remove 1 or 2 of the bulbs that are directly overhead of the tank so just that area is a little dimmer?

 

[Big Dog is cool]

Why don’t you have your boss make the employees at close the curtains as part of their job.

That will fix the problem.

 

[hyperdog882]

Interesting problem for sure. A couple of potential solutions:
If you can situate the tank in a way where the back side would be against a dark wall or you use a dark background on the back and do the decorations so that there is somewhat of a wall of solid decor down the middle of the tank, your fish, freshwater or saltwater, will most likely have enough darkness to sleep when the overhead light goes out. Considering that with the exception of the new moon phase, there is always some light in the sky at night s the fish don't need 100% darkness to sleep.
If the overhead lighting fixtures for the office are multi bulb fixtures, can you remove 1 or 2 of the bulbs that are directly overhead of the tank so just that area is a little dimmer?

Thanks! I do already have a black background on it and it's veryy heavily planted on one half (it's my first attempt at live plants and one half has rapidly outgrown the other for some reason). So maybe that will be enough - will have to see what it looks like when I get it moved to see if I need to add anything else for "shade".
As far as the overhead bulbs, they're all long fluorescent so I can't really do anything about them, sadly.

 

[hyperdog882]

Why don’t you have your boss make the employees at close the curtains as part of their job.

That will fix the problem.

Sounds good in theory but it's an emergency room so they're often super busy triaging dying patients. Can't really pull them away from that to close some curtains. And wouldn't want to, of course!

 

[Aiken Drum]

Do you have any kind of budget? Could you get someone to build a nice cabinet around the aquarium with doors you could close at night?

 

[hyperdog882]

Do you have any kind of budget? Could you get someone to build a nice cabinet around the aquarium with doors you could close at night?

Hmmmm - the "honey do" list may have just gotten a little longer. Good thought!