Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

Did I scold you really?
Which forum was it? You know at my age...
Now what was I saying?

Only in my own mind! I am wishing I would have a quarantine tank for this orange shoulder that is acting odd, then low and behold I read 2 forums that are talking about quarantine tanks. I guess you know the rest of the story!

Oh yeah, You must be refering to the "how low can your pH go" thread.
Actually I wasn't really scolding you personally. I was just grandstanding on my soapbox about the widespread problem of not quarantining new purchases. I have been guilty of it myself many times, even though all it takes is a 10 gal tank and a sponge filter.

It's funny that we often go to great lengths to keep stuff like hand lotion, deodorant and furniture polish out of our tanks. Then we go to the pet store and bring home disease ridden animals in bag fulls of bio-toxic water and pour 'em right in.

cough...cough...hmmm i'm starting to feel a little achy.

At the risk of upsetting everyone I will lend my opinion on this subject.

We added a UV sterilizer to our system about a year ago. Since then, we have lost fish to jumping but not to disease. Many people say that a UVS kills good bacteria as well as bad and this may be true.....however.....in the majority of closed systems, there is WAAAAAYYYYYYY more bad stuff than good. If that were not true, then your fish and corals would not likely get sick!

Any way....just my 2 cents. I will not have a SW system without one. There is just too much money and heartbrake involved in watching your prized fish die off.

Hope everything gets better.

Elizabeth

Hospital tank should be used....but who really has one....Like Liz I also have a UV and it cleared up my ich and no sick fish since...I use it on a sidestream where I only run part of my water threw it to Polish it up...

How does a uv filter effect all the little organism that are good, I just wonder if I will loss some of the critters that hatch out. I'm thinking of getting one for my self just to keep the water looking clear. My fish look better that they did but my regal tang Isn't eatting enough. My other fish seem to fending off the ich, My grama had a couple of spots and my rabbit fish had a few but I think that they are going away. I haven't seen any on my other fish. I've been feeding my fish small amounts of food every few hours. I think they will make it.

By using it on a sidestream some still make it .......I have plenty of corline algae so seems to let some get thru but keeps everything in ck....JMO

I am personally a member of the Tang Police, if you have any concerns about your fish death just give me a shout.

I'll talk to you tonight. Snoopy

About what ? All we did was get drunk and dog on Ryan.

Yeah well try again at the next meeting.

lzb3 is absolutely right about the UV sterilizer. The advantages drastically outweigh the disadvantages. The microorganism count in a tank is gazillions higher ppm than a natural reef in the ocean.

A U.V.S. will not kill any beneficial bacterial that are living in or on your rock, sand, or tank walls, but it will kill the crap out of free-floating algal spores and parasites.

A U.V.S can cure your algae problems and parasite problems faster than anything. That's why public aquariums use them on everything, to protect their investment. Also what it kills and what it doesn't kill can be adjusted from trial and error by changing the flow rate.