About a 3 months ago I had to break down my 40 long so I could
renovate. All of my plants and fish were moved into a much smaller
tank (10g) for about a week and a half. This other tank had no light,
except for the ambient light in the room.

All of my plants came out okay, no damage at all.

hth

Joseph

On Sat, 6 Dec 2003 21:16:51 -0800, "Robert Flory"
wrote:

Tom Barr recommends no light, 3-4 days shouldn't hurt, didn't for me.

bob

"François Arsenault" wrote in message
...
"Happy'Cam'per" wrote:

At worst you should do a tank blackout for 3-5 days. This will also give
your plants a head start on the algae.

Interesting that you should mention that trick, because I was just
wondering
about it myself. I know that algae do very poorly without light, possibly
dying altogether after a while. But what about plants? I suppose they
might
not suffer quite as much as the algae, but wouldn't a few days of total
darkness still be rather damaging to them? How long can plants live
without
light and still be reasonably ok? I'd hate to try to get rid of my algae
that way only to find out that my plants are so weakened that they'll need
a
few months to recover. They're doing badly enough as it is. Then again,
for
all I know it might be a miracle solution, with little effect on the
plants.

Francois