Thread: What would happen if i kept my fish tank in pitch dark. for three months?

They would still be fed and everything i would keep up with water changes. But everything would be done in the dark. Its an experiment that i'm doing.

I have tanks with White cloud minnows, chinese algae eater,kuhli loach,corydoras. How do you think each tank would respond differently? or would nothing happen?

Alternatively, how many hours of light should these tanks optimally get and why is it important to give sufficient light to the tanks.

A few things can happen if you do that.
First and foremost, you can't see what's going on in there. What if a fish dies? You gonna leave it in there for 3 months cuz you can't see it?
That would certainly contaminate the water and cause disease in all the fish in the tank.
I know if my fish don't get enough light, they lose their color, turning almost all white, They gain their color back when the lights are on a sufficient amount of time.

That's a really cruel, unnatural and stupid thing to do. When they're in the wild, they get hours of light from the sun every day, in their natural habitat.

It doesn't sound like you care a whole lot about your fish (or are yo just too cheap to buy lights for them?)

Maybe you should google it. You can see how much light diff types of fish need (if you care). You might even be able to find what happens if they don't get it.
I don't think anyone on this site is dumb enough to pull a stunt like that so you probably won't get the answer you need.
We all love our fish and try to take care of them. That's one of the reason we use this site.

Your fish will need therapy.

if you do not expose light to the fish, then the fish will turn pale and white.

the tank wouldn't respond differently with the different things in the tank.

and idk about the last question.

NO WAY U IDIOT DONT DO THAT DONT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE HORESES THAT WENT DOWN THE MINE SHAFTS AND HELPED TO GET THINGS OUT THE POOR THINGS HAD TO BE SHOT ATER BECAUSE THEY COULDENT SEE BY THE WAY UR FISH WILL PROBLY HATE YOU FOR IT :]

Total darkness would adversely effect the fishes behavior and conseqently their health.

Fishes uses light to orient themselves when swimming, to see their predators and food, other visually identify other species of the same kind during schooling.

Light also effect their metabolism. With lack of light, fishes metabolism will be significantly reduce and leading to poor health and even death.

At least few minutes of light per day would help greatly improve their health versus absolute or total darkness.

For you experiment, how are you going to ensure absolute darkness. I asked this because even the smallest amount of ambient light would effect the behavior of the fish and effect your experiment.

-rds

how about keeping you in the dark for 3 months you sick bastard!, im sure the experiment has been done before..look it up! dont do it!

If you have any live plans in these tanks, they will die. Your fish may not be able to see when you decide to turn the lights back on.

Hmmmm, well I imagine you would have se die off. Fish require light to see, so feeding them in the dark would make it difficult for them to find their food. This applies to most tropical community though, but I think you minnows would defintilly suffer.
Some things like plecos and algea eaters have excellent night vision and might thrive, to a point. But without light no algae will grow. Then the CAE would have no food. I've had many people tell me of their plecos sucking on to larger slow moving fish when they are starving. I don't see why a CAE would be any different. Plus, these guys get aggressive, mean and territorial when they get big.
The khuli loach would probablly be along the same lines, aggressive to any tank mates.
If any fish died, you wouldn't be able to remove them, and they would quickly dirty up your tank. And with the stress they would be under an outbreak of something seems highly likely. You would be unable to treat it effectively or efficiently as even a flashlight would null and void the experiment.
Also, they don't have eye lids. So turnig the lght back on will more than likelly permemnantlly blind them.
All in all, I think it's a kind of cruel experiment, sorry.

I don't know. I turn my lights on/off at feeding time, so it's a schedule thing. I doubt it wold hurt them.