I ran into two classic “maybe it’s time for UV” situations in the fish room, so I finally dusted off a UV sterilizer that’s been sitting unopened for years. First up was my no-filter tank that I accidentally kicked into a green-water bloom after I went in to clean and spot-pull algae. I’m pretty sure I did the old mistake of not being careful enough—maybe something on my hands, maybe I disrupted things too hard—and it fogged out like new-tank syndrome. I dropped in a small UV unit with a very weak flow (good for not blasting the tank), and over the next couple days the water noticeably improved. The second scenario was Ich on new rice fish after a heater failed and the tank got chilly. I fixed the heater and used a bigger UV sterilizer to help catch the free-swimming stage of Ich in the water column. The big takeaway: Ich has a long life cycle, so you keep the UV running longer than the last day you see white spots to catch the next wave. By day three, the green water was basically gone—near crystal clear. I also added Seachem Stability, but I’m not even sure how much credit it deserves; it was on sale and I figured it was worth a try. Either way, the tank recovered, nobody seemed bothered, and I’ll keep an eye out for any relapse after I pull the UV back out.