Lighting for my cichlids

[paulie]

I have a 55 gallon with a jack dempsey , a f-mouth and a convict. All are between 2-3 inches. I purchased a mrine-glo bluish light 40 watt. I put some cardboard spacers underneath the lamp to dim it a little. I did this because i read that dempseys really like dim murky water and this lighting will make it as real as possible , how true is this??? And please let me know if this light can hurt anything or help anything.

 

[Orion]

Im not sure how much dempseys dislike bright light, but 40w over a 55 gallon tank is not much light anyways so I would think you should be ok even with out the cardboard spacers.

The bulb you have is most likely an actinic light. It will not hurt anything in your tank, just give it a blueish look.

 

[Cichlid-Man]

My thoughts on this go like this:

I can assume your fish are tank raised at the wholesaler or where ever.....not wild. Therefore, the fish relaly doesn't know what the wild is like...and would be fine in a regular stock lit tank. Being raised in a fully lit tank, it prob. prefers and is used to a lit tank. If it were up to me i'd take the spacers out.

 

[S.Reef]

Dempseys live in murky water, but can live with bright light. What you purchased is a actinic lamp. Try a 6500K or a 10000K lamp. It will make the tank and fish look better...oh yeah, get rid of the cardboard.