The Puffer Forum

What are yalls thoughts on using a UV sterilizer to help clean the water in a puffers tank?

Not a big fan of them in general. They indiscriminately kill bacteria and organisms in the water column and there is good bacteria and organisms in there.

+1

Well that will be one purchase I will not be making. Thanks for the info

To me they are special and limited application tools. I generally have at least one in working order available, but rarely use them and never routinely. They are the same category as diatom filters (which I use more often) in that they are special-use tools.

I do have a UV sterilizer on my puffer the tank for two reasons

My tank gets quite a bit of natural light so this keep the green water at bay
Amazon puffers are prone to ICH

While they do take good bacteria out of the water column they also take out all the nasty stuff in there a swell I would say that the advantages far out weigh the down sides. As long as it is not attached to the intake of your filter.

waist of money... get a better skimmer

danielh144 wrote:I do have a UV sterilizer on my puffer the tank for two reasons

My tank gets quite a bit of natural light so this keep the green water at bay
Amazon puffers are prone to ICH

While they do take good bacteria out of the water column they also take out all the nasty stuff in there a swell I would say that the advantages far out weigh the down sides. As long as it is not attached to the intake of your filter.

I don't get the ICH portion .. either you have it or don't. It is a parasite. If they are "prone to it" wouldn't that indicate that it wasn't fully eradicated from the tank?

I strongly agree w/J-P' comment. Ich should not be present any mature tank. Nor should any other infectious disease.

Skimmers - protein fractionators - are not used in FW tanks. SAPs are Amazonian fish, certainly not even BW.

+1 i would have to agree either you have it or you don't

... ich is not caused by stress although stress is caused by ich ...

Ich is not caused by stress but there are many times ich has not been totally eradicated from a system & many fish still won't have the parasite on their body, if healthy. The stressed fish will succumb quickly to the parasite though.

I was using ICH as an example, I do introduce snails and shrimp into my tank as puffer food, these come from tanks with other fish in them so if any parasites are present and free swimming/floating more of them are eradicated and less exposure to the puffer. As the UV sterilizer cannot harm the fish its hardly an issue, especially since i've started using it - touch wood - I've had no problems.