Uv Sterilizers

[madness]

i know nothing about these could someone tell me pros and cons with them

 

[ox5477]

Pros:

• kills unwanted microbes in water, ie. harmful bacteria, disease, algae spores
• a treatment for your tank that does not require harmful chemicals that can play havoc with water chemistry

Cons:

• can be expensive when need a big unit for medium to large sized tanks
• requires out of tank plumming to be installed if not already used (not sure about this as there may be a hang on unit but any model I've ever seen is used in combo with a sump/wet dry filter cumbo)
• only treats water that flows through it, ie. does not treat whole tank and therefore in the tank things like algae and disease can still survive

There may be some more that other members will state but off the top of my head, these are the major factors

 

[dthoffsett]

There's a on-going discussion on this in tropical chat
http/www.fishforums.net/To-Uv-Or-Not-To-Uv-t204296.html

 

[rdd1952]

Cons:
[*]requires out of tank plumming to be installed if not already used (not sure about this as there may be a hang on unit but any model I've ever seen is used in combo with a sump/wet dry filter cumbo)

Actually, it can be run on a temporary basis without anything permanent. I ran mine off a powerhead and when I finished clearing up a green water problem on one tank, I simply moved it to another tank. It's actually still connected to the powerhead and I could start it running again at a moment's notice. It is true though that it has to run off a power head, inline with an external filter or some other method of orcing/pulling water through it.

[*]only treats water that flows through it, ie. does not treat whole tank and therefore in the tank things like algae and disease can still survive

Although it wont ever be able to kill 100% of the nasties in a tank, it will come close. The longer it is allowed to run the closer it wll come to getting them all. I guess it's kind of like taking 100 pieces of something and every day you remove half of what's left. Soon you will be working in fractions of a piece and a year later, there will still be some left but it will only be a very small fraction of a single piece.

And the other link does indeed have some very good information.