UV in a reef tank

[wgregww]

This may be a dumb question but are UV steralizers only for fish only tanks? Or can you use them in a reef tank? Will the UV kill the food for the coral?

 

[Curtswearing]

This may be a dumb question but are UV steralizers only for fish only tanks? Or can you use them in a reef tank? Will the UV kill the food for the coral?

Some of it. Luckily, coral isn't picky about eating dead food anyway.

 

[balogh03]

do you even need one????

 

[wgregww]

Everything I read says they are a good thing especially if you have fish in areef tank that are susceptible to parasites.

 

[class clown]

Can you point me to some research on whether good for a reef or not? I'm doing some investigating of my own - thinking about purchasing for the beneftits to fish and algae but don't want to do it if it will have any ill effects on the corals, ya know

 

[Curtswearing]

I don't have a problem with them.

They kill bad things......I.e. algae spores, Phytoplankton blooms, bacterial blooms, parasites, etc.

They don't kill good things. Namely nitrifying bacteria (because they almost all of them live in biofilms on tank surfaces as opposed to swimming in the water column), copepods, amphipods, etc.

Here's a post by Dr. Adelaide of http://www.oceanpods.com/

Originally Posted by ladygator
Hello - I'm not sure if all pods passing through a UV light will be done in. They actually have very good defenses to UV radiation because they end up in very exposed areas when their tide pools dry up. They have the stamina to crawl across what would be miles to a human being to get to a new pool of water. It has been demonstrated in arctic pods (think of how red Cyclopeeze is) that they can change coloration to combat the oxidation effects of UV radiation. I have recently helped out in a marine lab near my place in Santa Cruz and I placed a filter on the outflow of water which was passed through 2 sand bed filters, 3 canister filters in size ranges from 100 microns to 5 microns, and UV filter - guess what - there were still copepods coming through. We figured there was a leak in the canister filters, and the UV bulb was replaced, I believe to increase the chances of removing any remaining pods. These guys are tough!

 

[class clown]

cool thanks. Would there be any ill effects on a reef tank then do you think? seems only postive to me, but is there anything to worry about?

 

[Curtswearing]

cool thanks. Would there be any ill effects on a reef tank then do you think? seems only postive to me, but is there anything to worry about?

Is there something to worry about? Well sure....everthing has it's Pro's and Con's. Here's the rundown in my mind:

If you are running both ozone and UV simultaneously, you want to set both up properly. The reasons why are quite complex and I won't get into it unless you intend to run both.

UV's require bulb cleaning and replacement on a regular basis so always keep track of when you installed them. Trying to stretch the length of time means you are simply wasting electricity.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER EVER, EVER, EVER look at a UV bulb when it is plugged in, turned on, and out of it's housing. If you are curious why, grab a telescope and look directly at the sun with it. When you are done, dictate a response post to a friend who can still see, and have them explain why looking at a UV bulb is a bad idea.

Seriously, there are people whose goal is different from most of ours. Most of us want healthy fish, healthy corals, and healthy other invertebrates. We also want our tanks to look 'pretty'. While that is what most of us want, there is a small subset of this hobby with similar goals but they want to do it by attempting to set up entire food-webs and ecosystems. Their belief is that reef tanks fail because we aren't providing the entire food web to our tanks. Protein skimmers, ozone, and UV are bad news in their eyes because you are destroying a part of the mesocosm. Walter Adey started this but he has attempted and failed at this on a huge scale so many times that the Smithsonian removed him away from aquatics altogether and he failed with nearly limitless budgets. If you think you can succeed in a 75g tank with a limited budget when he couldn't succeed on huge systems with unlimited budgets, more power to you. I will say this though. Research Adey and his failures at the Great Barrier Reef Aquarium, the Fort Pierce Smithsonian Aquarium, and numerous others. What I do isn't the "right way". I find what this subset of the hobby is trying to do interesting, however based on my research, I don't think that it's "do-able" on a long-term basis.

Here's some pics of the results from one of his latest failures to set up a full ecosystem.

If you look close at the first picture, you can make out a couple of yellow tangs and a Hippo tang.

I didn't take those photos of Biosphere II. They were taken by my friend Matt. He said that the water was so green it was amazing. Additionally, he said all of the corals that weren't dead already were dieing and he had never seen that much algae in his life. You can view Adey's latest project here but you won't get any pictures like I showed above. http://www.bio2.com/

 

[class clown]

good tips and ugly pictures (Yuck-what a mess)

But, what are the downsides besides maybe not agreeing with naturalsist thinkers (who I do/can respect) and also maybe the cost? Any other downsides to these babys?

and no, don't plan on doing ozone at this time- that stuff scares me.

 

[Curtswearing]

But, what are the downsides besides maybe not agreeing with naturalsist thinkers (who I do/can respect) and also maybe the cost?

I don't disrespect their endeavours at all, I just believe they are fruitless based on the people who've tried them. However, who knows, in time, one of them might figure out how to make it work. Regardless, I run my tank on what I know currently works. I'm going to run my tank my way, if someone asks me a question I will give them what I feel is best but I don't have any agenda that everyone has to run their tank like mine. I feel that is VERY FRUITLESS.

Any other downsides to these babys?

Not that I can think of.

and no, don't plan on doing ozone at this time- that stuff scares me.

It can be very safe if you follow some very basic rules. However, if it scares you, don't bother. It is most certainly not required in this day and age of very good skimmers and quality GAC.

 

[goby2004]

we just put in a uv, and we had a hair algae problem as well as that yuckie slimmy stuff. our problem was that when we cleaned the tank and some flyaways would go over the overflow (wow what a shocker ) and would respore everything else. since we hooked it up, the stuff goes down the overflow to the uv and PZZZZZZZZZ its gone! the stuff is going away now... yay!!!