Fat zoas and uv sterilizer

[rogersb]

Yesterday was the first day I have ever ran a uv sterilizer on my reef. Today when I came home from work one of the first things I noticed was how large some of my colonies are. Its all zoas in the size range of rastas/ hornets, etc. They look huge compared to any other day. My torches also seem to have more extension.

There was a thread going on in this forum about getting zoas to be larger and mostly lighting and feeding was being discussed. It would be great if the contributors of that thread. Like chime in here and post if they do or do not run it sterilizers.

 

[Jesmann]

subb. i am also interested in this subject i just made i post in the equipment section!

 

[blasterman]

I run a sterilizer on younger tanks when there's a problem like bad diatom outbreaks, or something in the water that's aggravating zoas / palys or making my SPS retract their polyps. The one I have wasn't expensive ($30-$40 amazon) but it's incredibly effective.

I don't run sterilizer on more mature tanks because they shouldn't be needed. Once the tank stabilizes a sterilizer actually kills food that zoas / palys need for growth. Once a tank gets to the 5th month stage or so you should be done with the nuisance blooms and a sterilizer not needed - at least for softie tanks. My polyp extension on mature tanks is just as good if not better than younger tanks with a sterilizer. A lot of us are trained to want perfectly clean water, and the rapidly improved growth of my zoa/paly tanks running water on the dirty side (water has a distinct green/yellow tinge when viewed with the lights off) is much more preferable than crystal clear UV sterilized water. For correcting short term outbreaks of nuisance things UV sterilizers can't be beat though.