blasterman
Valuable Member
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2019
- Messages
- 1,730
- Reaction score
- 2,025
- What state or country do you live in
- Michigan
After it went fishless for awhile I added some damsels to one of my 20gal frag tanks, and no surprise it started going through the usual cycle stuff; diatom outbreaks, some nuisance algae, bit of cyano. I expected it.Usually I just let it ride through, and this isn't my only tank to fuss over.
However, the diatoms started to get really thick and I lost patience. Time for peace through superior firepower. Pulled out my trusty and dusty 13watt UV sterilizer, pushed the stuck impeller around a few times to unsieze it, checked the bulb, and let it go. Went lights out for the next day to hurry things along.. Took maybe 24hours and my water looked better than a complete water change. Utterly crystal clear. Diatoms 90% gone in 48 hours. Expected that. What I didn't expect is the cyano and dark green algae were gone as well. I actually expected them to start to increase sa the diatoms were removed as competitors.
The UV will obviously vaporize anything in the water column. What baffles me is why the fixed cyano and algae colonies also got nuked. This is a real head scratcher. Makes me ant to find somebody local with a bad cyano or algae outbreak and do a control test. Other experience from reefers who run more industrial UV on their tanks?
However, the diatoms started to get really thick and I lost patience. Time for peace through superior firepower. Pulled out my trusty and dusty 13watt UV sterilizer, pushed the stuck impeller around a few times to unsieze it, checked the bulb, and let it go. Went lights out for the next day to hurry things along.. Took maybe 24hours and my water looked better than a complete water change. Utterly crystal clear. Diatoms 90% gone in 48 hours. Expected that. What I didn't expect is the cyano and dark green algae were gone as well. I actually expected them to start to increase sa the diatoms were removed as competitors.
The UV will obviously vaporize anything in the water column. What baffles me is why the fixed cyano and algae colonies also got nuked. This is a real head scratcher. Makes me ant to find somebody local with a bad cyano or algae outbreak and do a control test. Other experience from reefers who run more industrial UV on their tanks?
