UV or not

i do have a problem with green algae but i have hermit crabs and turbo
snails along with a yellow tang. I've been thinking of adding a UV
sterilizer to my system but would this starve the snails and crabs.
The tang is ok for other foods but the little hemits and snails seem to have
no other source of food.

Robin

Most reffers don't want uv sterilizers on their
tanks. But some do use them. I'm not a big fan of
them myself.

How about some more details on your system.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets


nntp.nildram.co.uk wrote on 3/3/2007 7:31 PM:
i do have a problem with green algae but i have hermit crabs and turbo
snails along with a yellow tang. I've been thinking of adding a UV
sterilizer to my system but would this starve the snails and crabs.
The tang is ok for other foods but the little hemits and snails seem to
have no other source of food.

Robin

nntp.nildram.co.uk wrote:
i do have a problem with green algae but i have hermit crabs and turbo
snails along with a yellow tang. I've been thinking of adding a UV
sterilizer to my system but would this starve the snails and crabs.

It won't starve the snails and crabs, but I think it will do little to fix your
algae problem. I had UV sterilizers on my system for years. The main effect was
that infestations like ich slowed down a lot; the sterilizers gave time for
treatment.

George Patterson
If you torture the data long enough, eventually it will confess
to anything.

"nntp.nildram.co.uk" wrote in message ...
i do have a problem with green algae but i have hermit crabs and turbo snails along with a yellow tang. I've been thinking of
adding a UV sterilizer to my system but would this starve the snails and crabs.
The tang is ok for other foods but the little hemits and snails seem to have no other source of food.

Robin

I'll second what George just said. Years ago, I bought a UV to get rid of algae. It had zero effect.
Save your money, and figure out where the algae is coming from. Usually either from feeding too
much, new tank syndrom, sunlight entering the tank, water issues - to name a few. All tanks have algae.
Maybe it's normal algae. You have to clean algae off your glass. That's normal

"George Patterson" wrote in message newskrGh.180$iD4.83@trnddc06...
I had UV sterilizers on my system for years. The main effect was
that infestations like ich slowed down a lot; the sterilizers gave
time for treatment.

Could you present scientific method leading you to this conclusion? :-)

Screw you and your proof you little lazy assed son of a bitch, Go do
some freaking legwork on your own for a freaking change........why the
**** does everyone always have to prove what they say to you ya
asshole! Your about an untrusting individual there mr engineer. or
just plain ****ing lazy!

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 10:16:10 -0600, "Pszemol"
wrote:

"George Patterson" wrote in message newskrGh.180$iD4.83@trnddc06...
I had UV sterilizers on my system for years. The main effect was
that infestations like ich slowed down a lot; the sterilizers gave
time for treatment.

Could you present scientific method leading you to this conclusion? :-)



-------
I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!

Pszemol wrote:

Could you present scientific method leading you to this conclusion? :-)

Yes. Over 25 years of personal observation.

George Patterson
If you torture the data long enough, eventually it will confess
to anything.

"George Patterson" wrote in message news:ZdDGh.1988$nf5.651@trnddc05...
Pszemol wrote:

Could you present scientific method leading you to this conclusion? :-)

Yes. Over 25 years of personal observation.

Could you give me more details?

Pszemol wrote:

Could you give me more details?

I started keeping marine fish in 1975. Those were the days of the undergravel
filter, and the use of powerheads was hailed as a great advance by my friends
the next year. I started out with a 10 gallon tank and could keep one or two
fish alive with a great deal of effort. In 1977, I scored a great deal on a used
100 gallon tank. In the early 90s, I swapped for the 125 I have today. Until
last year, everything was fish-only with a variety of filtration methods. I did
not set up a hospital tank until last year when I started adding live rock.

I first added a UV sterilizer to my tank about 1977 or '78. It was an 8 watt
unit. In the early '90s, I added another. In 2005, I went back to an 8 watt unit.

Without a hospital tank, adding a new fish was always hazardous. Back when I had
no UV on the tank, once one of the fish started showing signs, the life
expectancy of that fish was usually less than 3 days; they could not take the
combined stress of the parasites and the copper treatment. Other fish in the
tank would invariably show signs of infestation later, but would usually make it
through. Once the first sterilizer was added, the rate at which the disease
spread decreased; my theory is that some of the parasites were being killed in
their free-swimming stage. After that, the first fish to show signs usually
survived, and some of the other fish would never show any signs at all.

Once I added the second sterilizer, I never lost a fish to ich, though I did get
the occasional infestation. In short, there was a direct relationship to the
number of watts of UV and the intensity and rate of spread of the disease.

Since I was not religious in changing the bulbs (and the bulbs get less
effective with time), I was also in a position to notice that an outbreak was
worse when the sterilizer bulb was pretty old. Again, this didn't happen once I
had two units running.

Since I've moved in the direction of a reef tank, I no longer have one hooked up
to the main tank. At the moment, my hospital tank is housing my cichlids while I
renovate their bedroom, but my remaining UV will go on the hospital tank once I
set that back up.

George Patterson
If you torture the data long enough, eventually it will confess
to anything.

With a reef tank, I would not be trying to keep
sunlight from going in the tank.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets


Yukon wrote on 3/4/2007 8:21 AM:
sunlight entering the tank, water issues - to name a few. All tanks have algae.
Maybe it's normal algae. You have to clean algae off your glass. That's normal