uv sterilizer

saint

ive noticed alot of people have been using these on thier saltwater setups, just wondering if its neccisary or does it depend on what type of setup you have?

Lupin

If you have algal bloom or ich, that's one of the reasons why UV sterilizers are used.

caferacermike

I think they are junk. They may help with killing free floating algal spores but all that does is create a food source for your established algae population. A long time ago I decided to test one out. What I found is that I lost my copepod population shortly after. They could not reproduce as readily as their spawn was getting nuked. I noticed an increase in undesirable algaes. Some people say they run them to prevent ich. Well in a tank being handled with good husbandry techniques you'd never need a UV sterilizer. Water changes and adequate hiding places for spookable fishes, a quarantine process and all should be good.

If you buy one to control algae you have a bigger problem. It's like ignoring the real problem. If you cut your arm so bad you'd need 20 stitches and your friend said, "hey man you should take an aspirin to dull the pain", if you took the aspirin would that mean you don't need stitches anymore? So if you have an algae problem wouldn't it be wiser to restrict it's food source and get rid of the dirty tank conditions instead of buying gimicky products to do your work for you?

Andre

I had one forever never had ich. Took it out and i lost 600 dollars in fish well i was out of town cause an outbreak of ich. So copods or not i am putting it back in. It really did not help me to do all my water changes. I do 50 gallons of water changes a month.

caferacermike

Wow that's really interesting to read on several levels.

First all the readings I've come across say that ich in marine environments rarely kill marine fish as it is not the same as freshwater. It merely irritates them. If left unchecked for a serious long time it could cause stress related deaths. So how long were you gone for?

Second, how did the ich get into your environment? If as you put it, you used a UV sterilizer forever and as soon as you disconnected it you got ich for the first time. My understanding is that if there have been no outbreaks for 2 months you can pretty much bet the farm the parasite is gone. So how was it introduced?

On the other hand I've not had a single outbreak of ich in 2 years of not running a UV sterilizer. The last time I had some was when I bought a tang, dang things are Ich magnets. No more tang, no more ich.[/list]

Administrator

Very interesting. I don't know much about the life cycle of ich, but is it possible that ich was already in the aquarium but kept at bay and prevented from spreading by the UV sterilizer? Or was a new fish introduced that could have introduced ich to the aquarium as well?