Having rescued 5 unwanted FBT's recently I've been trying to sort out the best lighting set up for them. Being largely diurnal it's reasonable to assume that FTB's require some amount of UVA/UVB - although clearly other amphibian species , such as Great crested newts or Common toads (UK) are entirely nocturnal and presumably receive very little UV.
Currently my flourescent lighting setup is not suiting the FBT's. Having tried several of the available versions of flourescent tubes (UVa/b and non UV) and played around with setting the lights at varying distances from the viv the toads still react to this lighting by going very dark in colour. Switching the lights off reverts them back to their usual vivid coloration within several hours.
This leads me to think that maybe it's the flicker of the tubes that is the problem?
It seems to be generally accepted that exposure to the older, magnetically ballasted fluorescent tubes can cause us headaches due to their noticeable flicker rate.
However, I gather electronically ballasted fluorescents refresh themselves at up to 40,000 cycles per second, which is too fast for the human eye or brain to detect and thus doesn't cause headaches.
Has anyone experience of using both old-style ballasts and electronic ones and the affect these have on FBT's or other amphibians?
Currently my flourescent lighting setup is not suiting the FBT's. Having tried several of the available versions of flourescent tubes (UVa/b and non UV) and played around with setting the lights at varying distances from the viv the toads still react to this lighting by going very dark in colour. Switching the lights off reverts them back to their usual vivid coloration within several hours.
This leads me to think that maybe it's the flicker of the tubes that is the problem?
It seems to be generally accepted that exposure to the older, magnetically ballasted fluorescent tubes can cause us headaches due to their noticeable flicker rate.
However, I gather electronically ballasted fluorescents refresh themselves at up to 40,000 cycles per second, which is too fast for the human eye or brain to detect and thus doesn't cause headaches.
Has anyone experience of using both old-style ballasts and electronic ones and the affect these have on FBT's or other amphibians?
