U V sterilizers

I would just like to get some opinions on how long do you run u v sterilizers.

I was told to run mine all the time when I bought it , but now I,m wondering if I should just run it when my lights are on, or every other day, or something like that. I dont have any heavy alge growth to speek of and my fish are doing fine, should I cut back on the sterilizer? Whats your opinion.

Brad

I would agree with the points behind questions 1 & 2

3. My understanding is that the "bad bugs" one wishes to kill with UV are a small percentage of the whole pelagic fauna. Also, many good and bad bugs spend a stage of their life in both places, before reaching adulthood.

The shortcoming of sterilizers, in my opinion, is that they process such a tiny amount of water. The water must move slowly through the sterilizer and then it goes back into the tank to be mixed with all the rest of the water. If the sterilized water were going directly into filling another tank, that would be efficient use of a UV Sterilizer.

A LFS employee once told me that his Flame Angel had ich so he turned on the UV Sterilizer and the next morning the ich was gone. He felt that this was because of the UV. I didn't have the heart to tell him that was impossible, not only because of the inefficiency of the sterilizer but because of the life cycle of the ich organism.

So, in short, my opinion, based on science and logic, is that you might as well not run it at all because UV Sterilizers are not useful in the typical reef aquarium. There are other, much more effective means to ensuring the health of a reef aquarium.

Sorry Brad, this may not have been what you expected to hear.

I have one that came with the tank I bought. I dont want it so if anyone is interested I will be happy to give it to you at the meeting on Friday... Any takers?? I have never used it so I dont even know what size it is... Sorry

For what its worth, I'm taking a microbiology/bacteria class to finish up my degree this summer.  Last night we covered UV sterilization in our lab.  Anyway, a lot of bacteria are able to do what's called "photoreactivation", meaning they have a special enzyme called photolyase that uses normal wavelengths of light to repair the DNA damage that UV light does.  So if someone did want to use a UV sterilizer, it would be more effective to run while the main tank lights were off during the night to more effectively kill more bacteria.  This also makes me wonder, going back to Tomason's points about people saying that UV sterilizers don't kill good bacteria just the "bad" stuff.  That may be correct if phyto has photolyase and ich doesn't.   (Which makes sense as a parasitic pathogen is less likely to carry "extra baggage" like that.) 

Just a thought 

Brian

Here is a use of UV that even Mark would like:

http://fishfreak.endoftheinternet.org/h2o2reactor.pdf

A Hydrogen Persoxide/UV Light Reactor
creating a firewall to stop phytoplankton predators
Craig Bingman
Marine Fish and Reef USA