Do fish sleep?

[WCMMinnow]

I leave the tank lights on all day and sometimes i forget to turn them off before i go to bed... is this bad for the fish? do they need x amount of hours with the tank light off?

When i turn the tank light on in the middle of the night, i see my platys staying still at the top hiding in the floating indian fern... are they "sleeping"?

[crackatinny]

To much time with the light on, will end up leading to alge problems, I guess fish do sleep, but they have no eyelids.

[Dave66]

I leave the tank lights on all day and sometimes i forget to turn them off before i go to bed... is this bad for the fish? do they need x amount of hours with the tank light off?

When i turn the tank light on in the middle of the night, i see my platys staying still at the top hiding in the floating indian fern... are they "sleeping"?

In a sense fish sleep, but not in the way you and I do. They slip into a torpor. Some hide in plants, like your platys, some hide under overhangs or in caves and some under the sand.
All vertibrate animals are tuned to a day/night cycle. Diurnal (day) animals operate during the day and sleep at night, nocturnal animals sleep in the days and operate at night.
All animals sleep, and to regulate their internal clock, they have to.

Dave

[Fishalicious]

I wrote an article on this a little while ago after there was a study published on this topic:

[Only Registered Users Can See Links.]

[Kuli_Loach]

When I turn on my lights all my cichlids are laying along the bottom wit their eyes wide open and don't move for a couple minutes and then they start acting normal so I guess they do sleep.

[nanaglen2001]

A few days ago I switched my lights on about an hour earlier than usual...man I have never seen so many sleepy fish on one spot than this morning.

Cichlids even change into a kind of "Sleepin color"

[Kuli_Loach]

Were they really dark? Mine turn almost black.

[MeganL3985]

My neons "sleep". My daughter got into the fish cabinet/stand and turned off the power strip once. It was in the evening. I turned it back on and the neons were all "in" the waterfall. Some sleeping horizontally, but there were two that were sleeping with there faces down, like vertically. It was crazy. I just flipped off the lights quickly and let them sleep. lol

[Fishalicious]

Yeah my tetra's turn head down as well when they sleep.. and Neons / Cardinals completely lose their color when sleeping which can scare new fishkeepers when they put the light's on in the morning and they are not 'awake' yet. They lose their color at night when resting so that they cannot be as easily detected by bigger fish who want to eat them :thumb:

My dwarf cichlids also lose a lot of color when sleeping - especially the Rams

[Lady Hobbs]

Good article Fishalicious. I know my fish sleep. Some just seem to hang suspended and some lower themselves to the gravel and kinda rest on it or get behind driftwood.

Please allow them to do this by shutting those lights off and save on those light bulbs, as well.

[WCMMinnow]

Please allow them to do this by shutting those lights off
as long as they don't snore

[kurly]

My husband who leaves for work in the morning around 4:30 just mentioned to me yesterday that when he turned on the aquarium light he noticed that my spotted rasboras were almost transparent. They are usually red with black spots on them. I had no idea that they change colors when they "rest" at night until he told me that. And now I just read it here, so I guess he must be telling the truth!

[Dave66]

as long as they don't snore

Some fish do snore. Triggerfish are famous for it; a kind of buzzing in and out when they sleep. I kept a large red-tooth trigger (Odonus niger) for years when I was a kid, and if you walked by his tank at night, you could hear him sawing wood, just snoring away.

Dave

[WCMMinnow]

Some fish do snore. Triggerfish are famous for it; a kind of buzzing in and out when they sleep. I kept a large red-tooth trigger (Odonus niger) for years when I was a kid, and if you walked by his tank at night, you could hear him sawing wood, just snoring away.

Dave

rofl and i was only jokin... i'll hafta do some reading on that fish

[nanaglen2001]

I have noticed half an hour before light off, my Cichlids change theit behaviour, as if their "inner clock" tells them its soon time to hit the farter. They go to their favourite sleeping places, and already get lighter in color.

Firemouths for example are almost colorless kind of silvery. Even the throat isnt red anymore.

If one doesnt know this, one can really think the fish is 99 % dead.

@ Dave
A fish which looks like this, just HAS to snore:hmm3grin2orange: :hmm3grin2orange: