UV Sterillizer

[drangel]

In my school we are going to start a reef tank, would having a UV sterilizer a better way to get rid of any microscopic organism floating in water, or we be okay without buying it?

[nereefpat]

Most folks don't use them, so you will certainly be okay without buying one.

UV sterilizers can help with certain algal and bacterial blooms, but they won't help you much in terms of disease cure/prevention.

[Timfish]

First of all, a UV should not be used as an excuse to bypass a thorough quarantine process. I use UV sterilizors and from what I have seen in my tanks over the years a properly sized UV sterilizer hooked up properly will eradicate ich from a tank. But if I don't have an ick problem I'm not going to use it. If there is a moderate to heavy infestation it probably will not prevent fish loss. (Part of the problem is there sre different strains with varing degrees of virulance.) One down side is UV's are also heaters so temps might need to be monitored. Because a UV needs a low flow rate to maximise the kill rate it should have it's own pump. This creates an additional issue because if the UV's pump is added to the sump there are two seperate loops and trying to figure how much of the ick is being killed gets problamatic. Best to have the UV's pump in the DT behind the rock at one end of the tank with the return at the other end. Here's a link to a paper on Ick, note the cysts attach to any hard substrate and can be transfered between tanks on rock or coral colonies as well as on a fish:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa164

[Barro777]

Not an essential item

[kmbyrnes]

Less than essential.
Put your money into a TTM/QT setup and truly protect your investment.