Reducing light. making fish comfort a priority

[henward]

Ok

in my balck aro/clown loach tank - therer are 4x power glo.

before there was masses of black algae, and they seem to be peeling off and dying. probably cos bulbs are gettin older and output of uv is less.

but still jsut as bright.

When i put peat in the tank set up, the water browned and i found the clown loaches are more active.

i believe this is the dimming of lights mixed with perhaps softer nicer water for them.

In the tank, amazon sword, twisted vals and a piece of wood with a nice set of anubias nana on it.

I was thinking of reducing light from 4 to 2 bulbs.

will this will my plants? Or will the plants just grow slower and some maybe grow longer to get moer light?

My priority has become to make the clowns more active as im happy with the plant amount and content in the tank.

I know that it will certainly help with black beard algae which is starting to go away now.

but i dont want to killt he plants, albeit slow growth rates - thats ok, so long as the clowns are more active.

will twister vals grow longer to get mroe light? or just grow slower or not grow at all by reducing light?

3 weeks after the anubias was introduced, i saw 3 new leaves come out, i nkwo 1 leaf a month is considered ok growth for these plants?

[Sophia]

I have twisted val in my tank that gets 5 or 6 hours of 8 watts only a few centimetres away from the tallest parts, and it survives but has been slow to establish. So far no runners and it's been some weeks. This is compared to when I had it in a different tank with 12 or so hours of T5 lighting + daylight, then it was almost crazy like a weed untill I killed it with Excel.

In that tank I also had an anubias nana and it put out a leaf occasionally, I called that average growth. Every time I put the driftwood it was attached to under the light it got green spot algae so I had to put it in a corner where it got staghorn instead . It was rehomed to one of Adrienne's tanks, I don't know how it has behaved since then.

So my experience is not with less brightness but with less hours but you get the gist 8)