UV Steriliser - canister / sump setups

[bruceau]

Hey Guys,

Forgive my ignorance here and if there is a thread that covers this already please let me know.

Okay so iv been doing alot of reading about UV Sterilisers and im wondering what sort of impact does this have on bacteria with in the tank and canister/sump.

my understanding is this, UV Steriliser will clean up pathogens? and stop algee and also keeps the water quality better.

Also, if this is the case woudlnt the bacteria in the sump/filters starve? or be killed by the UV Steriliser?

Cheers.

[Mickey C]

I think from my reading you'd have the uv on the return or last division on your sump, so your bacteria has already weaved its magic. I have an internal uv sorry so I'm not much use :(

[bruceau]

so its not going to have an impact on the bacteria in the filter? i mean with the uv steriliser its taking stuff out of the water that the bacteria needs to live right?

[ILLUSN]

first off UV kills ANYTHING living that passes over it.
to a lesser degree it will have a slight oxidative/ ionising effect on non living material (hormones, peptides, vitamins etc)

In a filter/sump bacteria attach to the surface of the media, the higher the surface area the more bacteria can attach the larger the potential load the filter can support.

Bacteria feed on nitrogen nbased compounds NH3/NH4+, NO2 and NO3 these are not affected by the UV.

As bacteria are attached they are not free floating, as they are not free floating they wont pass through the UV unit and cant be killed by it.

some bacteria will break away from the filter media over time, these are what colonises other surfaces and mature sponge filtrs etc that you add to an establised tank for use in breeding tanks, with a UV on these filter will take much longer to colonise as most breakaway filtration bacteria will be killed before it returns to circulation.

[bruceau]

cheers thanks for clearing that up.