uv questios

[mycat99]

ok i have bine told bye 1 fish store that these are not worth the money and bye onter that i have to have on .my tank is only live rock with few fish .also what size uv do you need on a 90 gallon .was told the coralite 9watt would be to small and would need a 18 watt one .also roughly how much water flow do you need in a tank .with my canister /koralia 1and 4 pump and my skimmer my flow rate is around 2400 gph .again was told it sould be 9X the size of tank.thanks

[BlueAbyss]

Hey man, welcome to Canreef :biggrin:

You do NOT need a UV sterilizer. That is the biggest crock going... if you don't overstock your tank, feed your fish properly, have a big enough tank for said fish to begin with, and perform regular maintenance (water changes, etc) your aquarium fish shouldn't have diseases any more than ocean fish.

As far as flow, for a FOWLR, since you don't have any corals, you should be good with anything around 10x and up. I wouldn't count the skimmer as 'flow', nor the canister (unless it's large, like 500 gph, and empty so it can actually move that much water).

I personally would get rid of the canister altogether (you don't need it if you have enough live rock, unless you want it for mechanical filtration or a place to put carbon and such... more work than it's worth for these uses, IMO)... but that's a discussion for another thread.

The best advice I can give you here is READ READ READ! Then you can decide for yourself if a UV sterilizer is right for you.