Black Lighting

[ragawaga]

Are black lights safe on a reef tank? In the past I'd been led to believe that they are can cause damage to the sight of fish and also kill bacteria in the tank. However, recently I've seen some pictures posted by people using black lights in their tank, and I must say that the colours that come out are pretty spectacular. I would like to use this kind of lighting for night lights.

 

[Robin Goodfellow]

hi.
Rather or not it is "natural" to use black light for night light is a different issue, but they are safe on a reef tank. As far as anti-bacterial property is concerned, there is little if any at all.

 

[brandon4291]

Yes I agree. Once saw this neat company on the internet that sells a focused black-light spotlight just for highlighting a coral group in a tank, such as a colony of zoanthids. I also know others who have them in the canopies for night viewing as well, but sometimes thats not as fun as accenting corals with blacklights during the day because they are all closed up at night/ it does add a neat effect to the aquascaping of a tank. The reason this was a spotlight was to concentrate the light for daytime enhancement...a regular tube BL will probably not make much of a difference when combined with existing daylights/actinics etc. Also remember a thread in which someone posed this question to Eric Borneman and IIRC he thought it was harmless to the corals.
Put pics on when you get them!
Brandon

 

[ragawaga]

cool.