Mark Henry wrote:
Hello all!

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for references and links.
I've been reading everything I can find for the past two weeks, as well
as talking to other reef keepers in my area.

I run a UV sterilizer my 75g freshwater upfront, but that's because it
gets direct sunlight through much of the day from skylights and indirect
from the room's windows and tends to have algae outbreaks if I don't run
one 24/7. However, the 50g tank in my office has never (knock on wood)
had an algae outbreak and it doesn't have a sterilizer - but then
there's only flourescent room lighting in the office.

Half the people (and references) I've talked to say I need a UV
sterilizer on a reef setup (no matter what room it's in), the other half
say no. So, what's the deal? Do I need a sterilizer or not?

Thanks!

mark h


Mark,

I think you will find that a lot of people are split on this. I would
say you do not need a UV, but they can help alot with pathogen controll.
The down side to a UV on a reef tank, is that since you have lots of
filterfeeders they need items to filter out of the water to eat.... the
UV will kill the items that flow through the UV so you will have less
food for your filter feeders. Now some of those items are bad things,
so the UV killing them can be very good. IE if you have a case of
sal****er ick, if the UV is setup correctly it can kill all of the ick
that flows through it and help to stop the spread. Personally I feel
that if you have a healthy reef tank, a UV is not needed at all, since
the filter feeders will filter the ick out of the water just like they
do everything else.

Kim Gross
www.jensalt.com