Do fish see red?

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tpeters

tpeters

Exodon
MFK Member
Sep 5, 2011
46
0
21
San Marcos, CA
Hey guys,

I have read that fish don't seem to see or react to red lighting. I just want to know if that is the truth as I have a project I wanted to start working on involving adding red leds to my tank. They would be on a switch and would not be on all the time. It would be more to show off or check up on fish in the dark without disturbing them.

thanks in advance
 
okay so maybe the title wasn't the best choice, but i'm more concerned about the red lighting rather than the color itself. Like I said, I have heard/read that red lighting will not disturb fish but I wanted to know if anyone has had any experience with this.
 
I know they can see red lasers. I used to have some of them chase a laser pointer dot around. It drives livebearers crazy. Never seen em swim after anything as fast as they chased that red dot.
 
I'll take a stab at it. I believe they see it. Its light for goodness sake LOL. The intensity is obviously significantly less than regular lighting. But the real question is.. will it disturb the fish. Red lighting has been proven in other areas to have little affect on the retina of the human eye in dark. Which is why Police, Pilots and Military use it at night. I personally doubt it will bother them in temporary uses while all lights are off, however I can't help but wonder why all fish lighting I can think off has blue for night time aside from moonlight simulation. Also my terrarium has a purple bulb for moonlight.
If I were you, I'd do equal blue and red to make a nice night time purple glow. JAI
 
Why not try a couple colors like red blue purple and such on a smaller scale with some fish and see which seams to have the least affect on em?
 
Well to make this more clear, let me tell you what the plan is. To go along with the regular LED daytime light, I will be adding a moonlight as well. Both on timers to go on at the respective times.

So where does the red come in? I have a 37 gallon in my room that I plan on putting a few honeycomb cats along with a few other small peruvian or south american community fish. I know the honeycombs are very nocturnal and I plan on building them a cave in the back right corner that will have a window along the right side of the tank looking in. I plan on making the cave a fairly decent size. Since the roof of the cave is going to block out the light coming form above, I want to somehow wire very low intensity red leds into the roof of the cave that I can turn on when needed to check on the little guys. The biggest problems I can think of are diffusing the light somehow to fill the cave, and keeping everything waterproof. For the latter, I was thinking of something along the lines of running the wiring through airline tubing, and sealing it all off with silicone. This way it should remain waterproof, as well as staying fairly low key.

If anyone has any thoughts or recommendations, please chime in. It would be greatly appreciated. Also, does anyone know of any materials I can mold in a manner similar to clay to then be textured and painted to look like stone or driftwood? It would need to sink as well. Trying to decide if I want to build something custom to fit perfectly, or if I'm better off using natural materials (rocks, driftwood, and sand/grave)l to accomplish this.
 
this one is rigjt up my alley lol.. as an avid and very active fisherman the "red being invisible" myth has sprung up and come out for everyone these days.. what it is based off of is how the colors break down and become less visiable as the water column gets deeper.. red being the most rapid and generaly become less visable at sbollower depths more freaquent then other colors.. there was a huge article in one of my magazines that went into real depth with the colors spectrum and so forth but to save you from alot of un needed reading, no red is not and invisible color to fish, to an extent, though depending on the waters depth, it may become less visable to them. hence the big boom for red colored fishing line... I hope I havent bored u..if u want to read more search under.fishing related articles online..
 
definitely gives me something to consider peacock. Just more concerned about how they would react to the light being so close to them. Thats why I am looking for something that will be a very low intensity but still give enough light to see whats going on in there.
 
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