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navy crf
01/17/2014, 05:31 PM
Santa brought me a UV sterilizer for my 150 gallon tank and after having hooked it up, within a week I noticed that some of my corals have not extended their polyps and others have "shrunk". My tree corals and some zoas have flourished and taken off while most mushrooms and yellow polyps and button polyps have almost deteriorated to the point of being gone. My question is this: Can either the UV sterilizer have such an effect that the lighting system is now too bright for the corals or possibly changed something in the water chemistry. At last check all parameters were fine (temp, pH, salinity, calcium, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite and ammonia). I also did a 50 gallon water change and switched out the carbon reactor and phosphate reactor around the same time. Anyone have any words of wisdom about the possible effects of a UV sterilizer?

Crimson
01/17/2014, 06:20 PM
Check and make sure the glass quartz tube is not cracked. What brand uv and how many watts is it? How is the UV plumbed?

UV will clear the water, what effect that has on the PAR values I am not sure.

syrinx
01/17/2014, 06:56 PM
Other than making the water more clear, there is little else I can think of UV related. I wonder about the other changes you made. Generally when softies do poor, when the enviorment has improved-its because its too clean. Softies tend to like a little nitrate and phos.

syrinx
01/17/2014, 06:58 PM
Check and make sure the glass quartz tube is not cracked. What brand uv and how many watts is it? How is the UV plumbed?

UV will clear the water, what effect that has on the PAR values I am not sure.


Both carbon and UV can increase light penetration in a dramatic fashion. Also when you replace a old glass top- sometimes the corals will need to be acclimated to the increased light.

elFloyd
01/17/2014, 07:05 PM
Can either the UV sterilizer have such an effect that the lighting system is now too bright for the corals or possibly changed something in the water chemistry.

The UV bulb should be enclosed and have no affect on your lighting system being too bright unless water was extremely cloudy. Which UV sterilizer do you have and where do you have it mounted?

navy crf
01/18/2014, 07:02 AM
I have a 150 gallon tank with a 55 gallon sump. The sterilizer is in the last stage of the sump with the return pump, the phosphate reactor and the carbon reactor. I have a maxi jet 1200 pushing water through the UV sterilizer which is a coralife 18 watt turbo twist that is rated for tanks up to 250 gallons and it is on continuously.

Dozer1one
01/18/2014, 08:25 AM
Oh damn I have to ask, you don't literally have the sterilizer mounted in the last chamber right.

Dozer1one
01/18/2014, 08:35 AM
I use the same sterilizer and did have problems with another one, my original turbo twist had a crack in the inside housing which was allowing tank water to meet the connections and cause stray voltage, it was a bran new sterilizer right out of the box, once I discovered the problem I exchanged it for another and never had a problem since. On another note which has nothing to do with your problem, mine is plumbed directly into my return line so any water going back to the tank has to pass through it. Don't quote me but I would say a maxi jet 12 would be a little on the small side and not efficiently sterilize all water

Crimson
01/18/2014, 10:01 AM
I hate to be a bearer of bad news but that uv is not very good. I use an aqua uv 57watt on my 105 gallon @ +/- 300gph with 30 gallon sump if that gives you an idea.



<snip> Don't quote me but I would say a maxi jet 12 would be a little on the small side and not efficiently sterilize all water

Too late :lol:

Flow rate, turnover rate and what you want to kill is important. Using my example above. If I wanted to reduce crypto (ich) I would need 366,000 µw/cm2. To achieve that with a 57 watt uv I would need to keep the water flow around 266gph on a 100 gallon tank with 100 gallons of water volume. The turnover would be x 2.5 hr provided all the water flows into the sump and into the uv (which doesn't happen).

navy crf
01/18/2014, 03:22 PM
Sterilizer is not mounted IN the chamber. It is hung on the outside of the tank with the pump/maxi jet inside the tank. The uv output goes back into the last chamber of the sump and them another pump sends it back up the the display tank.

Palting
01/18/2014, 04:27 PM
You have the 6X model, I have the 12X model. I don't use mine anymore for a variety of reason, but I do have a few observations for you.

1. Your pump puts out about 295 gph, which is good for algae. For Ich you need 110 gph, and for bacteria you need 500 gph running through the 6X unit.
2. You may indeed be clearing up the water, which may increase your PAR.
3. You may indeed be clearing up the water, decreasing the nutrient levels.
4. However, I doubt that your UV sterilizer is making that significant an impact on either PAR nor nutrient levels.
5. As you can guess, I do not believe your UV sterilizer is causing the issues. There are a lot of things that happen coincidentally in this hobby, and I think this is one of them
6. You can test this hypothesis out by simply taking your sterilizer off line for a few weeks and see what happens. If it is indeed your sterilizer that is the culprit, which I doubt, then your softies should get better.

HTH!!