in my opinion, a few minutes of UV light here and there is not going to harm them
"what evidence do you have to back this up?"
Oh wait, that only works when you want to dismiss evidence...surely your unevidenced assertions of opinion are totally valid.
Ive personally never heard of an Axolotl being harmed from exposure to a novelty UV light for just a few minutes
So naturally as a skeptic and someone who cares deeply about evidence you are just going to asume that this means there aren´t any harmful effects at all. By the way, what are we considering harm here? Does the animal have to die from terrible skin tumours for UV exposure to count as harm?
I also do not believe that this green fluorescence you see in their eyes is even visible to them, its extremely low intensity and wouldn't be any brighter than UV reactive paint under a UV light, virtually nil (I have no direct evidence to support this so take it as opinion and not fact)
Demonstrably false. They do see it, which is why they REACT to it. Also, even if it is low intensity..it is INSIDE their fricking retinas! Their entire eye-ball is lit up. If you had UV reactive paint coating your retina and you were exposed to UV light...you´d notice....
There just hasnt been enough research into the affects of UV light on axolotls or glofish for us to really have any basis for factual recommendations, its all going to be opinion and anecdotal (in my opinion, lol)
Nothing wrong with anecdotal evidence when you have direct, repeated observations of stress responses in GFP axolotls reacting to UV light exposure.
I understand where everyone is coming from, why expose it to stress if its not needed?
honestly, and in my opinion, a UV light is much less intense than a small full spectrum aquarium light, which are used on axolotl tanks all the time and do not stress out the lotl
Yes, this happens A LOT and i disagree that this doesn´t stress the animals or has any harmful effects.
UV lights put out much less light than a single T5 full spectrum or even warm temp lights
But they put out MORE UV light....which has very different and much more harmful effects than light in the visible spectrum.
I´m willing to take your statements and experience as anecdotal evidence, but you are the one who came in demanding scientific literature for basic observations. Now you are all about "this is my opinion", "this is my own experience"...but that was a huge problem for you in your first post apparently...
The observations stand. GFP axolotl´s eyes lit up. GFP axolotls frequently react badly to UV exposure just like they frequently do to strong visible light. UV light causes tissue and genetic damage. Leucistic and albino individuals have MUCH less protection against UV radiation. All of those observations and statements are factual and stand by themselves. If the conclussion you want to take from them is "i´m going to deny that there could be anything wrong about exposing animals to UV light unless you provide me with scientific papers"...that´s your failure....
Bare in mind that i´m not saying that exposing GFP axolotl to UV light is going to make them explode or cause them untold missery and pain. I´m saying there are more than enough reasons to say that not only is it not beneficial, it is at the very least potentially detrimental (and demonstrably so in some cases). That´s all i need to judge that activity as unethical.
I´m sorry if i seem overly snarky, but i´m really peeved about this kind of "show me a scientific paper that shows that my axolotl is going to DIE if i use a UV light for 5 minutes or else i´m going to keep doing it" thing.
