Do Turtles Need Light at Night? – TurtleBio.Com
Taking turtle as a pet is quite challenging because it needs lots of light all the time. You will need uva uvb light for turtles and also turtle busking light. There is one confusion about the night light, do turtles need light at night?
Well, some turtles like purplish-blue or red turtle may require night light, especially during basking.
But most of the turtles don’t need a night light. Let’s find out more about them through this article.
The type of lights your turtle needs
If you take a turtle as a pet, then you will need a turtle tank to keep it. In the container, you have to make sure the turtle gets enough light like the wild turtles. The wild turtle gets heat and UVB rays from the sun, so you have to ensure enough heat and uvb lights for turtles in the tank.
UVB light
This light plays a vital role in the growth life of the turtle. Vitamin D3 production gets easy for this light as this vitamin is essential to build calcium in the turtle body. Without calcium, the turtle suffers from less bone growth, soft shell, metabolic bone disease, shell rot, etc. You can guess how important it is for you to set a UVB light in the tank.
But there is a thing you have to check whether the light is UVB light or UVA light. The difference between UVB and UVA light is that the UVA light helps control activities like mating, feeding, and the turtle’s 24-hour movement. This light is not as essential as the UVB light.
Heat lamp
Mainly the sun does the heating task for the turtles. But for the pet turtle, you will need a heat lamp for heating. The turtle is a cold-blooded animal, so it cannot produce its own body temperature to stay warm. So you have to use a heat lamp for the turtle in the tank. Without the heat, the turtles get sick fast and may lose life early. Most turtle heat lamp wattage is 50, 75, 100, and 150 watts. You have to use it per the enclosure size.
Believe it or not, the turtle maintains a circadian rhythm like humans. It means the turtle needs to follow a 24 hour day and night cycle, or else it will face problems in reducing stress.
Night light
The night light works for turtles who sleeps in the basking area during night time. But maximum turtles don’t need a night light.
Think about the turtles in the wild; they don’t need any light at night time. So your pet doesn’t need a night light also. Put off the night light during night time to let the turtle maintain the day and night circle.
If you want to use a night light, you can use dim lights made of black, purple, and red glass. This type of light doesn’t disturb the turtle’s sleep at night.
How to train the turtle to sleep at night without light
Before training the turtle, know the turtle species as some species hibernate. You can adjust the turtle’s day-night cycle easily as it can adapt to your lifestyle easily. Fix the turtle know the time of feeding and sleeping time, keep the light off to let the turtle see that it is bedtime. Try this for some time, then the turtle will get used to it, and it will know when sleeping time is.
Conclusion
Before setting up the lights for the turtles, this common question does turtles need light at night arises. The answer is, turtles don’t need a light at the night because they will feel disturbed while sleeping. Also, we have to teach the turtle to maintain the day-night cycle. If the turtle is not trained up, it will feel stressed, and the immunity system will get reduced. So don’t use any night light in the turtle tank to let the turtle grow healthy and happy.
