What is a UV Sterilizer?

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surfergal

Small Fish
#1
Oct 22, 2002
22
0
0
#1
Hi everyone. I have a 55 gal freshwater community planted tank with 110W of power compact lighting. Tank is finished cycling and has been up and running for about 3 1/2 months now. I have a serious algae bloom. Totally green, cloudy water. I am working myself to death changing water daily - sometimes up to 50% to try to give the plants time to develop an edge over the algae. This has been ongoing for about 2 weeks now. I've tried different solutions - none of which has worked. A large fish supply store suggested a UV Sterilizer with a powerhead as a method of killing the algae spores. Will this work? I sure hate to shell out $100+ for something that just won't work. On the other hand, I'm perfectly willing to do this if it means clear water again. I can't even see my fish right now! Thanks.


surfer
 

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aznpanther98

Large Fish
#3
Oct 22, 2002
341
0
16
Silver Spring, MD
#3
my uncle has one of those on his tank and it does kill parasites and green water but i had the problem with myten gallon that i recently setup and for about a month it was cloudy water and has some baby swordtails in it to help cycle it anyways i did 20% water change every few days and then di a major 50% change after about a month of setting up the tank (still had major cloudy water an 0 nitrites) and then few days later the water started to clear up maybe it's the plants+good bacteria just catching up with the algea bloom now my water is clear stil have a hair algea problem but my snail is taking care of that i don't use those algea killing chemicals they could hurt fishes and plants
 

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hangdogdaddy12

Small Fish
#4
Oct 22, 2002
26
0
0
63
Biscoe,NC
#4
First before you dish out too much money to your LFS, go to www.bigalsonline.com and order a tetratec uv clarifier for 79.95 + about 5.00 shipping. This uv is good for up to 100 gal. tanks and is compact including mounting hardware. Second you need to purchase Seachem's Purigen bag filter. This is a totally synthetic filter media that will pollish your water crystal clear in about two weeks. I swear by them. You need to get two 100ml bags. Some questions are; Do you have a external canister filter? If not consider the Rena Filstar XP2. It is an excellent filter for the money. I also am a firm believer in Marineland's bio wheels. These are great for bacteria. Hope this helps ya gal, I had a green water attack once too and bought a 75.00 Whisper Diatomic filter, when what I just told you about would have did the trick, so take my advice and get the items I've mentioned. Good luck! *thumbsupsmiley*Hang
 

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ronrca

Guest
#6
#6

It might be a good idea temporarliy however a UV sterlizer will also 'sterilize' ferterilers and nutrients required by plants. That is why uv sterilizers are not used with planted tanks. It basically kills everything. I wish one could but there is a 'sterilzer' that does work. Its called an ozone filter. Expensive but works on planted tanks because it will kill bacteria and algae but not nutrients. Reason behind that is ozone is very unstable. Ozone is an 0[sup]3[/sup] and oxygen is O[sup]2[/sup]. By having the extra oxygen molecule makes is very unstable therefore it will kill any living cell for some reason or another.
 

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