Fish Tank Light Timer

One of the biggest problems I have had with a fish tank is remembering to turn the lights on and off. I like for the kids to be able to watch the fish during the day so I try to turn it on before I leave in the morning. Then I like to watch it for a couple minutes during the calm down period of the night after they go to bed.

That means that on a day that I remember to do everything, the light is on from 6am until 9pm or so.

I occassionally will get a little more algae growing than I like and when I looked into it, I learned that one of the things that causes algea growth is too much sun light.

According to this article about how to properly light a fish tank, I learned that you really only need the tank on for 6 to 12 hours for freshwater fish only and 10 to 12 hours for freshwater and live plants.

I bought a cheap timer that you plug into the outlet and plugged the fish tank lights into it. Now my light is on from 9:30 in the morning until 8:30 at night. The kids normally are just finishing getting ready for the day at 9:30 and my son frequently spends a few minutes looking at the fish and I normally feed them either right before or right after the kids go to bed at 7:30.

The best part is that I never have to think about lighting the fish tank anymore. It turns on and off exactly when it is supposed to. Plus, I haven’t had any kind of an algae problem in the last couple months since setting up the timer.

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