Lighting in a Freshwater Tank

I have a freshwater tank, 270lt, i have fake plants and trees in it. Now my question is do the fish require the lighting aswell as much as the real plants do?
I have currently 4 bulbs in it, 2 long yellow bulbs and 2 short blue bulbs. Do the fish need the lights to stay on the entire day? Do they need lights at night too?
I have found that my plecos come out at night when all is dark quite a bit.

I dont have enough knowledge on the lighting expectations for a tank and require your assistance guys.

thanks

 

Your fish will be quite happy without lights - the natural light of the room will give them all they need to see. If you want live plants you need light otherwise its more for your viewing of the fish than for the fish themselves

 

@Aslum,

You will actually find your fish will be more relaxed with less light.

The lighting that generally comes with these all in one type set ups is usually sufficient to grow easy growers like Swords, certain Crypts, Java fern and Anubias. I always recommend lighting photoperiod to be on for 4 hours in the morning, then have a mid-day break of a few hours, and then have the lights on for 5 hours in the evening. The plants can handle the break in the light period perfectly fine, but algae struggles with this type of set up... and prefer lights to be on for much longer periods to bloom.

I have found that although I can see the fish very well during the light-off stage in the midday "siesta" the fish are a lot more relaxed, and fish that generally hide during the full light (Loaches, Cory's and Ancistus) come out at the time.

So the benefits of this set up is great for keeping your fish healthy and stress free, it doesn't inhibit plant growth, and it helps manage algae growth.

Because you are running plastic plants, you could actually only have the lights on during the times when you are at home and want to enjoy them... but i don't see any problem by turning the lights off during the day. Just don't have lights on for longer than 8 hours at a time... else you could land up with algae problems.

Now my challenge to you is to get some real plants....

 

Mr Bob the Builder

Thanks mate! You know i have been thinking about the real plants however trimming them and introducing CO2 to the tank....... hmm

Grissom thanks for the info share too!

its good to know that at this stage I dont have to actually worry about when and how long I have to put the lights on for

 

The plants I listed don't need a lot of trimming (maybe once every 3 months) and definitely don't need CO2.