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My wife insists that it would cut down on maintenance if I had a UV light. She says that I would not have to clean the tank as often and scrub the algae off the glass.

I religiously clean my tanks.

Once a week, I change 50% or more water and clean the glass of algae.

If I understand the UV light, they would kill free-floating algae and some parasites/bacteria.

As far as I know this would not help with the algae that forms on the glass. Is this correct?

I really donâ??t have a problem with â??green waterâ?

I would agree with that.

Getting a common bristlenose would probably remove any algae that grows in the tank...

Of course, neither the UV nor the bristlenose would remove any of the nitrate that builds up in the tank... So you still need to change water in the tank...

Edit: fix fat-fingers problem...

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Mats

I would like to support barbies comments regarding fish comming out of uv water. Whenever we get fish from the wholesalers that run uv filtered systems we expect the initial influx of whitespot and bacterial infections which result the reduced immune systems of the fish. UV appears to be too "infection free" which causes the fishes natural immunity to lower due to lack of use. The problems are short lived and we dont suffer many losses but the problem is there none the less. I wouldn't use uv in a home tank unless absolutely nessessary, that is of course only an opinion

I used a UV filter for about 6 months on a 29 gallon tank. It was the kind with the wiper. It cut down on the algae that grew on the glass and the plants, but not very much. The water changes, smaller feedings, etc. from my limited experience, do a better job. You may want to test the water coming out of your tap to see what the quality is(with a regular test kit). I also found keeping a feeding journal helpful. I never knew how much I was overfeeding until I wrote it down. Just my two cents.
Amanda

I'm not a fan of all those hightech gizmo's at all and UV is stright on the very top of things NOT to use on a tank, but more something for the dedicated Koi-crp breeder or something.

I'll explain:
short version:
-it's for sloppy fishkeepers and leads to skipping maintenance!

ok that was short
now the long version:
-UV kills off floating algae, protozoa and bacteria.
when a tank has a bacterial or unicellular algae-bloom it shows; the water turns cloudy, white or greenish and often the fish are visibly unconfortable.
time for some major cleaning! rinse the filter, change the filterwool, do a big waterchange, you name it.

what happened was this: the water got saturated with invisible (!) nutrients like nitrates, phosphates etc etc. since the biological capacity of the filter obviously wasn't up for the job; other oppertunists jumped in and multiplied quickly.

NOW if you hook up such a UV gizmo and leave it running, the water looks pristine. very clear, very nice...
right up to the point where you get out of bed, ALL your fish are floating dead as yesterdays' mutton on top of the tank and the stench is like The Bog of Eternal Stench.

ooooops, forgot the waterchanges due to the fact that the tank "looked so clean ALL the time", and the fish were literally swimming in diluted nitrites, ammonia, fishpoop and urine.

I'm sure you get what I'm trying to say
nothing beats the ol' hose & bucket!

Thanks all for the replies. I myself am not sold on the UV. As I stated in my post my wife is the one who is the advocate. This was all based on what the guy at the LFS told her. He has one running on his Discus tank and told my wife he hadn't cleaned it for two years. I am sure he just meant the glass but I can't even believe that. I donâ??t mind the maintenance myself. I do water changes once a week and at that time wipe the glass with one of those Algae sponges. No big deal. Anyway, I think Iâ??ll save my money for now.

Thanks again.

I wrote:

I'll explain:
short version:
-it's for sloppy fishkeepers and leads to skipping maintenance!

dlhumphrey wrote:

This was all based on what the guy at the LFS told her. He has one running on his Discus tank and told my wife he hadn't cleaned it for two years

I rest my case