Ebay UV sterilizer

[Formulator]

I’m having a difficult time understanding the extreme price tag on UV sterilizers from the “best” brands sold by BRS and other reputable hobby retailers. Its essentially just a tube with a UV-C bulb in it, right? It really grinds my gears the way these manufacturers take advantage of our hobby with ridiculous profit margins on products that take cents to produce…

Anyways, has anyone tried any off-brand or DIY solutions? I found this one on Ebay which looks well designed. Tempted to give it a try. Talk me out of it. My primary goal is algae control.

 

[C_AWOL]

If your primary goal is water clarity then just about any UV-C will work.

If your goal ever ventures into disease control (not eradication) then typically longer housings + bulbs perform better due to greater dwell times (flow is still a really important factor)

One last thing to consider is the UV housing which can break down over time from uv c exposure and cleaning the quartz sleeve. More expensive housings are more uv resistant (and or significantly thicker) and the sleeves are usually serviceable in some way (build up on them is inevitable even in freshwater)

If you plan on buying a cheap one (basic plastic housing) then I strongly suggest doing a weekly check on the housing in particular (you should never see any light through it) + put it away from other electronics in the case where the housing gives out (if you failed to notice or it springs a leak before you could notice)

 

[Chrisv.]

In one of my nano tanks, I have a uvc bare bulb from Amazon that is simply put in a hob filter. It quickly resolved a bacterial bloom.

 

[DIYreefer]

I use the jebao 39w uv sterilizer on all of my tanks. They work fine, but my main goal for them is clarity. However, I think it's worth noting that I have a powder blue tang (known ich magnet) in one of my tanks that has never had a speck of ich other than when I took the sterilizer offline for about a week. As soon as I turned the sterilizer back on the ich went away within 48 hours. They work just fine for me.