Has anyone tried lowering their lighting?

[Rusty_Shackleford]

I don't have many "bright" vivaria to begin with. I only have bromeliads in few tanks, they get rather bright CFL lighting. The rest have just generic fluorescent fish tank lights on them. Not very bright at all, bright enough to keep plants alive, but nowhere near the blinding pseudo-sun that some people like to use.
I do think this topic goes hand in hand with seasonal and even daily variability in temperature and humidity. Everyone should strive for that at least.

[Philsuma]

Remember...lighting can absolutely be 'too bright', especially with a poorly designed and planted vivarium. Sparse planting, no where to hide + high octane lights can = no breeding and stress.

[Philsuma]

i'm seeing a lot of newbs asking for advice and permission for coralife and HO Reef type lighting and it's SUCH a common mistake.

I made it too - wanting high output light. The brighter the light the BETTER the plants, right ?? Wrong. I'm convinced lighting that is too intense coupled with poor hardscaping and planting is 100% responsible for non-breeding.

In Other words, bright light is bad for the frogs. Unnatural too.

[joneill809]

All my custom lighting fixtures typically had 3 x 13W JD's that would cycle through different levels of lighting (1-2-3-2-1 lamps on). The frogs were more active during the low light intervals so I went ahead and moved down to 2 lamps per fixture with a shorter peak lighting cycle when both lamps are on at the same time. My frogs seem to be more active, especially the smaller shy tinc morphs (Lorenzo and Bakhuis).

[Philsuma]

The jungle is not the reef.

Bromeliads are NOT hard corals needing halide or HO lighting.

They do not need to 'supremely colour up' with intense lighting.

There are more drawbacks to too much lighting...

[Frogman955]

For a long time now I`ve been saying that dart frogs don`t need strong light because they spend most of their time under the canopy.
When I set up my new vivs they were all put together with this in mind.
All we need strong lamps for (as far as I`m concerned) is for the benefit of our plants.
When I set the new vivs up I binned all my fluorescent lamps and went for LEDs which I have assembled myself.
The downside of using the LEDs was that the broms started sprouting stretched out leaves because of the lower light levels.
My vivs have "shelves" built in which cast shadows onto the floor of the vivs so that even if I had a search light shining down, the frogs are able to go into the shade to get away from it if they need to.
I have plants growing down off these shelves which increases the shade making it a lot easier for them to get shelter.
Over the last 6 months I`ve added the new Arcadia Jungle Dawn lamps which have really made a huge difference to my broms and of course other plant life and moss has really come on well too.
Something I found which I`ve not seen mentioned is the effect that fluorescent lighting had on my frogs.
I had a Terrib which was having which can only be described as an epileptic fit, and I have since lost that Terrib.
On showing a video to a very experienced keeper he said that he had seen similar behaviour from Terribs before, but didn`t know why.
Since changing over to LEDs I`ve not seen even a hint of this happening again.
I do know one keeper who had something similar with his Terribs and on changing his lights around it seems to have stopped.
I have a friend who was rather disappointed with his Terribs as he never saw them out much, and there was me telling him to get them because they`re bold as brass.
He has now removed his fluorescent tube (because it blew) and is now using LEDs only, and suddenly he is seeing his Terribs a lot more.
My own Terribs are out all the time, but they are under LEDs these days.
Although I`ve not yet done it, the plan was for me to only have the Jungle Dawns on for a few hours a day to sort of replicate high noon and help the plants while giving the frogs lower light levels the rest of the time.
Eventually I`ll get around to changing things around, but for now I`m waiting for the broms to get back to their former glory before turning things back down.


Mike

[Philsuma]

I buy it.

[Dendro_Dave]

The new Finnex 24/7 automated dawn/dusk lights might be a good option for anyone who wants to experiment with lower light levels through some of the day. The most intense part of the photoperiod is only about 6 hours long, the rest of the time the light is slowly ramping through dawn/dusk or in moonlight mode. The light is geared for aquariums where longer/brighter photoperiods can lead to algae blooms if the plants don't have all they need to out compete the algae (like C02 injection). Not so much of a problem in vivs, but might be less stressful for frogs then what many of us do to light a viv.

The light's size/wattage ratio in most sizes just about equals 1 watt per gallon (or in the ballpark at least) in most standard sized aquariums 20-55gal, and the PAR should be enough for most low to mid light demanding plants in those tanks with 1 light, and probably some high light plants if planted higher up.

Here is a graph showing the Finnex 24/7's progression made by one of the users on plantedtank.net...


And here is a thread about that light and some others...
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=9053

[Philsuma]

New wave lighting trends where the output and cycle mimic a natural day with periods of high sun and then cloud cover or low light and THEN paired with misting and humidity. I thinks that's the key. We are almost far removed from a constant shop light or high output bulb overhead that's turned on one setting for ten hours each day.

Interesting tech times, for sure.