Consistently Inconsistent Light Cycles

[jbherpin]

I was curious to the effects on darts when the lights stay on longer/later than normal, and some days the lights go on later... Is there a health risk? I could understand it will throw off breeding for some more sensitive species, but will it have a more significant health risk as well? All my thanks! I need a timer, lol! Sometimes I fall asleep on the couch and wake up at 7am and the lights are still on. There is no heat risk, but... Sometimes I sleep late and forget to turn on the lights until late afternoon, early evening(which I like, but doubt how natural that cycle is...). All I am saying is that I am terrible at maintaining a consistent cycle.

JBear

[DemonicalEnvy]

as far as frogs go i only have pacman frogs atm and they didn't seem to be bothered by the random times i would turn them on or off. I work midnights and sometimes i would forget to turn their lights off and the lights would be on sometimes close to 18+ hours or other days i wouldn't turn them on at all. Same with my bearded dragon she would still wake up at the same time and still go to bed whether the light was on or not but i do get outside sun so that could make a difference. I am not sure if your frog room or tanks are in a room with no windows but if they have a window i think it would be more then efficient to give them a sense of daylight and night without a timer on your lights. P.S. Buy a timer lol i jsut linked all my lights and it's so much nicer knowing they are getting 12on and 12off consistantly.

[Ed]

Variations in photoperiod can have a number of different impacts on animals and even a single exposure can potentially do something to the organism. There is some varied data out there but I don't have time to tease out the potential impact. If you are interested in it, go to google search and type in the following string search "Frog photoperiod experiment" and check out the results. If I remember correctly,disruptions of photoperiod tend to have similar responses across taxa so you should be able to find that data and do some comparisions.
I don't think that the impact is enough to really cause problems but this doesn't mean that it doesn't affect them.

Ed

[B-NICE]

I would think the lights would bother them. Lights bother my eyes sometime. Go get a timer from homedepot, it will save you and the frogs a headache.

[jckee1]

Sounds like a timer might be in order. My brother in law installed an industrial timer that shuts on/off power to a string of outlets around the frogroom when it was originally built. I just plug the lights into these outlets. It has been very handy.
Jim