Tonyah204

is my 20w lighting having an effect on the water temperature while turned on? I have a sticker label temp on the outside glass tank and when i have on the light at night, the temp seems to go from 80 to 84 and almost to 86 degrees. i have to turn it off just so the temp can go down. but when i feel the water with my fingers, it feels like the normal temp. but i can feel a bit of heat from the light when i put my hand over the tank. what is the problem?

Red1313

What type of bulb do you have? Incandescent bulbs will raise the temp of your water while florescent bulbs will not. Also I don't think that those stick on thermometer strips are very accurate. You might be better off to go with at floating thermometer (they have suction cups to stick them to the side of your tank) they're usually somewhere between $2-4 dollars at petsmart.