I am about to start working on props for a show in which there will be an "under water"scene for which the director wants to turn off the lights and use glow in the dark fish (which I assume will then be manipulated by extra actors dressed in black to make them look like they are swimming)

    So, my question is this, in my very limited research up to this point I think I am understanding that there are two different types of glow in the dark
paint; straight expose to light glow in the dark type, and glow under black light type.  Has anyone had experience with either or both of these?  Do you have a preference for ease of use? intensity of glow? perhaps most important, is one significantly less expensive than the other?  I may or may not already have access to black lights, so that might lean me in that direction.

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks.

the Wild Fire line of blacklight paints are really worth the money, but you must have a good primer coat beneath them.  You will likely want to experiment a bit with your materials and see what happens with each material

Thanks for the advice everyone, as suggested I'm going for black lights as opposed to glow in the dark, and after some research it looks like I'm going to try and use normal day glow tempera paint, which glows under black light very nicely and is less expensive than black light paint.

One more question though, at first I thought the obvious thing to do was to hang black lights from batons and have them lighting straight down onto the stage, then I started thinking that maybe, since the front of the props are the only parts that need to glow, it would be better to lay the lights on their side along the front of the stage (sort of like footlights)

has anyone tried either or both of these techniques and has a preference

thanks in advance