UV Sterilzer for Reef Tank?

[Mark]

Just getting started with our new reef tank (28g JBJ Nano w/HQI 150 watt Metal Halide). The tank has been set up for a couple weeks with 30lbs of live rock and 20lbs of live sand. Now we've been slowly added 5 misc snails, 2 peppermint shrimp and 5 small misc hermit crabs. Over the next few months we'll be adding mostly corals with a couple small fish (i.e. Clowns)

I've been looking through a lot of reef articles and there little or no discussion about using UV Sterilzers.

Should I be using a UV Sterilizer?

If so, does anyone have an opinion on the JBJ In-Tank Submariner UV Sterilizer/Clarifier?

[reefman]

There is a lot of controversy about using UV. There are two major problems with them, if you get one that actually works (many are not really powerful enough to do much good), then you are killing beneficial things as well as the possibly bad things. The other issue is if a disease breaks out, and you are using UV, you are only killing the pathogens in the water column. Unfortunately most diseases don't work that way. They have a host (coral or fish). The UV is not killing any of those since they aren't in the water column. My advice would be there are a lot of other things just starting out that you could put your money into. It would be better to take that money and invest in higher quality equipment - skimmer, pumps, lightes, etc. (as Mark said, in the reef hobby you get what you pay for).

Stephen

[Derek]

One of the plusses is that it can prevent diseases from jumping from one fish to another. It also prevents algae blooms. I have one in my tank but I do not have it on my return pump because I don't want everything dead. Instead, I just have a second pump that feeds to my UVS and then the return from that goes back into the sump.