UV Sterilizer

[blue_ram]

Is this

UV Sterilizers: JBJ Lighting Submariner UV Sterilizer/Clarifier

a waste of money?

From what I understand, even low powered UV light will kill many protozoans including BGA and makes ick unable to reproduce.

The guy at Big Al's said they wee toys. Not sure what he meant by "toy" since something either works or doesn't.

[RCHanlin]

In my opinion, to get the optimum effects that UV provides, you need two things: Exposure time and powerful UV ( wattage ). The longer the exposure and the higher the wattage, the better.

What size tank are you wanting to use the JBJ for ?

[blue_ram]

Originally Posted by RCHanlin

In my opinion, to get the optimum effects that UV provides, you need two things: Exposure time and powerful UV ( wattage ). The longer the exposure and the higher the wattage, the better.

What size tank are you wanting to use the JBJ for ?

It is for the 40g, but I do not intend to run it full time. Just for a day or so after a good cleaning where the sand gets stirred up a lot and the fish are stressed. Basically to reduce the potential for opportunistic infections.

Also thought it would be good for a quarantine/hospital tank.

[Lotus]

IME, they have limited use in freshwater tanks. I've never had them get rid of BGA. They may be useful for ich, but that's easily solved by quarantining all new fish and treating in quarantine, if necessary. They should really only be used occasionally, if at all, in freshwater. They are detrimental to plants, in general, because the UV breaks down certain fertilizers.

[RCHanlin]

I've never known UV to be detrimental to FW tanks especially planted tanks as you suggest in your posting Lotus. How does UV effect minerals? ( I'm confused )..

Blue...

If you decide that you want to run the UV, I'd really consider running it all the time. I'd also consider going with at least an 8watt for the 40gal. preferably an inline hooked to either a low output pwr head or canister with adjustable flow rate to make sure you get the most UV contact.

I also believe that using it on a quarentiine tank makes alot of sense .. Quarentining the fish first would most likely keep you from having to run a UV full time on your main tank but I'm old school and prefer to have mine running at all times.

[blue_ram]

I finally got one. I got this PetSmart Internal UV Sterilizer with Power Head and UV Sterilizer Lamp Replacements Customer Ratings & Reviews - Top & Best Rated Products and WOW!!!!! The water in my 40g is crystal clear in 1 day. The fish are perkier and more colorful and my light actually hits the bottom of the tank now. The colors of the plants and fish are just so much more vivid.

The only complaints I have is that it is very large and unsightly in the tank. The filter does clog easily, but pulling it out and squeezing out the gunk is very simple and will hopefully let my main filter go a bit longer between cleanings.

Anyway, for $59, if it saves me a few hours of work in it's lifetime, it pays for itself.

1 question; how do you know it really works? It's cleared the water, but it also have a very fine filter sponge that got clogged very quickly, how do you know it isn't the additional sponger filter and powehead clearign the water?

[Rayneuki]

You don't really. All I know is that UV light is able to take random river water in a glass and purify it within a few seconds to be completely drinkable. They've got a UV pen light for such occasions on Think Geek.
If I get the money I might end up getting one for my 30 long. Puffers are messy :[ and it might aid and such.
Or I could just slip another HOB on... Don't really want to do that though =_-

[Orion]

Hmm, the only reason I can think of off hand that a UV sterilizer would clear a tank up would be if there was a pretty massive bacterial bloom in the tank. If you didn't have a bacterial bloom, I would venture a guess and say the extra sponge is responsible for removing a lot of the fine particulate waste from the tank that was making it cloudy. What kind of filter do you have on the tank?

[Lotus]

UV filters basically break the cell wall of the cells that are exposed to it, killing those cells (bacteria or unicellular algae).

[blue_ram]

Originally Posted by Orion

Hmm, the only reason I can think of off hand that a UV sterilizer would clear a tank up would be if there was a pretty massive bacterial bloom in the tank. If you didn't have a bacterial bloom, I would venture a guess and say the extra sponge is responsible for removing a lot of the fine particulate waste from the tank that was making it cloudy. What kind of filter do you have on the tank?

I have an Aqua Clear 200 same as the newer AQ 50. I had a fair bit of algae and a dwarf chain sword doing it's transformation from a long leaf plant to a short leaf plant so I had a lot of suspended matter floating around.
I don't think it is a bacteria bloom, I get those when I add new fish and when I took off the second AQ 30 to move to the 20g. That had cleared up.

My main concern is that I think my rams might have ich and a UV filter along with higher temps and treatments of Ich Attack should clear it up and stop it from spreading.

To have an unseen light light kill unseen microorganisms takes a leap of faith for me. But then again, if I could see the light, then I probably wouldn't be seeing anythign else ever :-)

I really would like to drop the temp of the tank back down to 78-80 because the plants don't seem to liek the higher temps. It's been a week, th eheater is set at 85, but the thermometer shows the tank at 87.

I am curious as to why the UV light doesn't cause mutations in the organisms that survive exposure.

I also am not confident that a $59 product will do what everyone else is selling for $200.