Milky or Cloudy water? UV Sterilizer to the rescue!

[Grisby_2133]

Hi all,

I literally wish I had taken a "before" photo. I had this milky/cloudy water, which if I left the lights off for a few days would be "less cloudy" but would return within an hour or two when I turned the lights back on.

UV-C Sterilization has completely fixed that. I personally vouch for it's efficacy in this regard!

Background: My tank used to be beautiful and care-free. After my old tank cracked, I purchased a Red Sea Reefer 250, an Apex, and went all in. But after cycling, algae came in merciless waves. I tried a maintainance service but couldn't afford them! The rocks became covered in various slimey algaes, and nothing helped. I even purchased a 55W UV Sterilizer, but it did nothing to the algae all over the rocks! At some point my return pump died and since the UV-C light did nothing, I re-plumbed the new pump without it. (The Sterilizer was literally outside of the tank stand, sitting off to the side!)

After some (I have a 1.9-year-old...so...yeah...probably close to two years of...) neglect, I noticed the water was cloudy, and nothing would help! I purchased a Kessel grow light and some Chaeto to out-compete everything in a corner of my sump...to no avail! The water grew cloudier and cloudier!!!

After some research, I discovered it may be algae that would be killed off by a UV-C light.

Tonight at 5 PM, I cleaned up my old UV Sterilizer and re-plumbed it into the return hose path, then left home for a meeting. I was thinking that tomorrow I'd slow down the return pump to maximize the UV-C exposure.

When I returned around 10:30 tonight, the water was completely clear, and my skimmer was completely full!

I would take an "after" photo, but it's still just bare rocks, so still embarrassing (FOWLR until algae is controlled) but the cloudiness is completely gone!!!

I would humbly offer for your consideration that UV-C/UV Sterilization can completely cure a "cloudy tank" if it's caused by something living in the water column.

FYI my UV Sterilizer is a 55W Jebao "Pond clarifier" that I found cheaply on some online retailer a few years ago.

 

[Grisby_2133]

Update: It's really crystal clear the morning after. I am still amazed, no carbon, skimming, nothing did it, but the UV-C light worked like literal magic. I still have a hard time believing the solution was so simple, and it worked in just a few hours!

FYI a good description of the cloudiness I was seeing would be "milky." I don't think it had a green tint to it at all—which is why I tried everything else first! I didn't think it could possibly be photosynthetic. But then it lessened but grew back cloudier when I ran lights-off for a time, so that was the hint that it was biological and photosynthetic.

I'm just posting this here because I saw a lot of other "solutions" and wanted to just add my positive experience with UV-C.

 

[Matthew Halford]

Glad it worked for you. I have a sterilizer in the mail to hopefully help out my situation here. Wish I could have shipped it overnight, this cloudy water has me annoyed

 

[rustic_reefer]

I will second this post. Had white cloudy water that filtering and carbon was not touching. It began to look like it was bothering some corals. I hooked up a UV sterilization unit in line with my return and turned it on. Less than 24 hours later the water is clear. Meanwhile the skimmer started picking up tons of this white cloudy stuff. UV sterilization works wonders!