These light timers are probably the most effective and easiest manner of replicating your fish s night and day cycle.
Do you turn betta fish light off at night.
What helps regulate that is buying a timer at your local hardware store that does this automatically.
Now betta will survive the night with the filter off but you are harming the biological filter itself.
Also a cheap appliance timer may do the trick if your bulbs don t eat up too much power.
Here is a picture of some.
The easiest way to do that is by turning the tank light on when you get up in the morning and switching it off when you go to bed at night.
And the most important things you need to remember are.
Basically it plugs into the wall and then plugs into your aquarium light and it switches the light off at your certain set time everyday.
With all due respect guppies4life ive seen you say 16 hours before when advising on light hours 8 10 is about right someone running at 14 16 as ive seen you say will more than likely cause algae problems at some point.
Some bettas won t eat at all when stressed by too much light.
However just like their wild cousins captive betta fish do need to sleep at night.
Light timers are the easiest most effective way to regulate your fish s night day cycle.
As for the filter.
If you don t want to go this route you can use alarms to remind you each day as to when to turn the lights on or off.
If you don t want to use light timers set an alarm and turn the lights on and off at the same time each day.
You can keep female betta together but you need large tank and a decent group of fish 5 to spead out any aggression.
Consistent light cycles that replicate daylight and nighttime reduce stress and mimic natural environments.
And yes you should turn your lights off on a regular schedule.
Simply set the timer to turn the light off at the same time each evening and to turn it back on the next day.
So you must turn out the tank lights overnight to replicate the natural day night cycle that the fish enjoy in the wild.
One becomes dominannt and keeps picking on the weaker one until it dies.
You ll see this stress play out in feeding habits mostly.
Too much sunlight can overstimulate your betta causing stress and agitation as well as possibly causing feeding problems.
Always best to leave it running.
If your betta fish has too much light it can become overly stimulated and stressed.
And of course the answer is off.