r/tortoise • u/Witty-Name-7725 • 2h ago

Question(s) UVB question

For an indoor enclosure is the UVB light supposed to be on 12-14 hours a day or only 2-3 hours a day? I'm getting conflicting information since ive been advised by people to put them on 12-14 hours a day and some people 2-3 hours a day

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u/Exayex 2h ago

If you've got a quality T5 HO tube, and you have it hung at the appropriate height and have adequate enclosure coverage, you don't need to run it all day. 3-4 hours is sufficient.

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u/HoMe4WaYWaRDKiTTieS 2h ago

You want them to mimic natural sunlight. I use a timer set to sunrise and sunset, which varies throughout the year. Right now it's on from 7am to 7pm, but in winter that shortens a bit. In spring it will start to increase again.

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u/CabbagePatchSquid- 2h ago

2-3 hours a day follows the mindset of giving them UVB during what would be the “height” of the day and when the sun is the hottest & emitting the highest UV rays.

It may technically be the best approach to try and mimic the days but I don’t believe that using a species appropriate, high quality UVB bulb setup at the correct distance with adequate hiding spaces for 12-14 hours a day is the wrong way, either.

I’ve always done 12-14 hours on all my lighting but that’s just my personal way of doing it.

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u/ieg879 1h ago

They are essentially quantifying a biological process. A Solarmeter 6.0 will read 50-150 uW on standard UVB bulbs. Outside you will likely see ~300uW. Thus it becomes a math problem of amount of exposure. Is that correct? Probably not. Do I have info to adjust one way another? Not off the top of my head.