Having the right aquarium light in your fish tank is important not only to be able to look in and see beautiful tank but also for the well-being of your fish in any living plants that you have in the aquarium. Both your tropical fish and plants will benefit from an environment that this simulates their natural environment and will do best with 12 hours of flight a day. You might want to consider putting the tank lights on a timer so that the lighting can be as consistent as possible.

Chances are when you bought your aquarium it came with a hood and a light. While this lighting is probably adequate in the beginning, as your fish keeping skills progress you may want to consider other types of lighting especially if you want to have live plants in your tank. No matter what lighting you choose, you should easily be able to replace the bulb in your hood so that you do not have to buy a whole new hood unit should you decide to get a different kind of lighting or if you're aquarium light simply burns out.

There are three types of lighting generally used in freshwater aquariums - regular fluorescent, incandescent in full spectrum lighting. Saltwater fish tanks might require additional lighting considerations especially if you have live corals or live rocks in the tank as these do well with fluorescent lighting but need much more than regular freshwater aquariums so you may want to be sure you have room for two tubes in your hood if you are setting up a saltwater aquarium and plan to have rock or coral.

For freshwater aquariums, incandescent lighting is generally a poor choice and really doesn't come with many clearings anymore. The reason for this is that the incandescent lighting generates a lot of heat which can cause the water in your tank to become too warm for the fish. Fluorescent lighting is a much better choice for aquariums as it more closely mimics the natural sunlight and shows off the beauty of your freshwater fish better. If you are fish tank set up came within incandescent light, you should be able to switch to fluorescent as the bulbs fit in the same socket.

You want to make sure that you have the right amount of light - not too strong and not too weak for your tropical fish tank. Generally this means that you should have 3 Watts of aquarium light per gallon of water. if your tank gets a lot of green algae very quickly then you are probably giving it too much light. You should be aware that aquarium lights will get weaker over time and the bulbs should be replaced every eight months even if they seem to still be working.

If you are keeping live plants in your aquarium in the lighting needs will be a bit different than if your aquarium is a fish only aquarium. You may have noticed when you have previously put plants in the tank that they don't last long at all. Perhaps you thought that aquarium plants which are short-lived? But, in fact, aquarium plants should live just as long as house plants the problem is that most people do not provide them with the proper type of lighting Inside the aquarium. While some of the fern like aquarium plants might do okay with regular fluorescent lighting, you will need a tri-phosphor tubes or full spectrum fluorescent light for most aquarium plants to flourish. For the tri-phosphor tubes, you'll want ones which concentrate on the green, red and blue spectrum ranges.

The aquarium light that you choose is important depending on what you are going to put in your aquarium. You want to be sure to get the best quality lighting you can afford and be sure to install and maintain a properly for beautiful tank and healthy long-lived fish.

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Lee Dobbins writes for http://www.fish-tank-guide.com we you can learn more about choosing, setting up, and maintaining your aquarium as well as find out about certain accessories like the aquarium light.