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#1
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Are UV's really worth it???
I have read so much literature on U.V. sterlizers. Are they really worth it? Has anyone senn any difference with using one prior to not? Thanks. Tim
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The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist! |
#2
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is it for a fish only? because if it is just run copper but if its a reef you might want to runa uv on and off
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#3
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I like uv's for FO and FOWLR tanks cause they do help with menacing parasites like ich and also kill free floating algae in your tank making for crystal clear water.Def. not for reef use at all.
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#4
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UV is great to use to help prevent parasites or at least help. This is especially true with FO or FOWLR tanks. Copper is a horrible product to use with tanks that have LR because it kills any little critters you have that make it Live rock in the first place. You may not see the small critters but they are there and play a very important role and keeping the tank filtered and maintained. My rule of them is simply not to use Copper with SW tanks other than quarantine tanks. UV is Good...........
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#5
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I use uvs on my reefs and like them.
Uvs kill what passes through them. Most of the microfuana in a reef is benthic and never sees the inside of the tube. They do kill waterborne bacteria and some larvae. Probably no more than your skimmer does. Their lethality is based on the amount of radiation relative to the size of the organism passing through. Hence, they are very lethal to bacteria,less so to algae and less still to parasites which are relatively large. They wouldn't kill a pod unless one decided to live in there.The amount of radiation the organism receives depends on the length of time it stays in the tube(dwell time or flow rate) and the wattage of the bulb. As an example, the manufacturer's performance chart for the Coral Life 18w turbo twist is: 110gph kills parasites,240gph kills algae, 500gph kills bacteria. The question that is not answered definatively is how many times you must turn a tank over to be effective. They are very good at keeping your water clear since they kill some green water algae. This helps to keep the glass clean. They are also useful in my opinion in helping fish to avoid infections from bacteria and amyloodinium(aka velvet) which is a dinoflagellate algae.Unless significantly oversized they will probalbly not kill cryptocaryon irritans(ich) which is a large protozoan. They dop no harm unless you wan't high levels of green water (phytoplankton. If so, supplementation and target feeding are options.
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Tom |
#6
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Copper in a FOWLR is definantly a BIG no-no! That is unless you never want any type of invert to live in there. I have a FO tank thus I have dosed copper before.
I have used UV's in previous tanks & mostly it helped with algae controll. I didn't have any issues with parasites b4 or after adding the UV so no change there. The glass on the tank didn't need to be wipped down as much & I figured IF I did get something in the tank the UV would of helped keep it on the sick fish. I beleive one of the biggest mistakes people do when getting a UV is they go to small. The flow needs to be so slow & the aquarium volume so large that it really doesn't do anything. For a 150g I wouldn't get anything smaller then a 40w unit, preferably 60-80w+ for there to be any significant gain/improvement. Which remings me, I still haven't hooked up my UV.... been sitting in the garage for 4 months now..... |
#7
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UV will not do anything for parasites. You're talking about a tenth, of a tenth, of 1% that the parasite will pass through the UV before infecting a fish. If the parasite is present, any outbreak would easily outpace a huge UV on a tiny tank. But for algae/bacteria control, since those are always present, they do a decent job. Is it worth it? You bet, the operating costs is pretty cheap, a $15 bulb every six months, only if salt, or carbon, or DI resin was anywhere near that cheap per month by itself...
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#8
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Tom |
#9
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UV helps algae though...Really you should not need UV for parasites anyways. A newly set up tank that is fallow and cycling for a month and then all new live stock is QT'd for at least a month, will NOT have parasites like ich to deal with. Anything new going into the tank is QT'd...from crabs to macro algae. Its that simple and easy not to ever have to deal with ich. I hate the theory that you cannot have an ich free tank. |
#10
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Ok but with enough turn over and a large sterilizer you could thin them out a bit perhaps more than one in ten thousand. By the way, they swim twice going in and coming out of the host.I'll say it once more, a sterilizer is not a cure for cryptocaryon irritans; quarantine and appropriate treatment is. There are other parasites and pathenogens that the uv can help with and overall I think they are a very good tool.
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Tom |
#11
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And I did mention them swimming twice but the second time is very short and again, a UV is not going to catch many in this stage. |
#12
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You guys say that it will control algae, but will it allow coraline to grow?
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#13
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I really am not at all a fan of UV...ozone is a thousand times better for algae control. Ozone will also kill parasites, although I wouldn't say its super effective for that. Ozone also eliminates ammonia and nitrite as a bonus. |
#14
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A uv sterlizer is not a cure for ich but it has many benefits noted earlier and is a usefull tool.
It does not negatively effect coraline growth. It only effects what passes through it.Coraline is encrusting.It does not kill hair algae either. Sometimes,no many times,aquarist faced with ich in a reef tank choose not to remove all fish and take a tank down( because it's too hard to catch the fish and/or ripping a mature reef apart to catch them will devastate corals and other living things), even though,quarantine, treatment and a fallow tank are the only proven ways to erradicate ich. In these cases where the aquarist chooses to wait the 11 months for the ich strain to perish and hope for the best the use of a sterilizer is prudent and it should help avoid some of the extremely nasty secondary infections including some bacterial infections and the dinoflagellate algae amyloodinium (velvet) which is vituallly always fatal without prompt aggressive treatment.The water is simply more sterile which should be of benefit to fish which are already weakened by cryptocaryon.
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Tom |
#15
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I can tell the difference with the UV. If one gets a low wattage UV and runs the water through it really fast for the wattage, or does not turn the tank over through it at least 2 times an hour then it probably won't work. When one reads of the maximum flow rate through a UV listed by the manufacturer it is not at this fast flow rate that you will harm ich, at the fastest rate it may only harm algea spores and bacteria. I really think my has helped with my ich, but it will also kill free floating live plankton which is food for corals, I have a fish only, live rock tank so it doesn't matter. I would think one could use it with corals if one uses dead plankton type food. Another consideration is that the UV also warms up the water some so I only need half the heater wattage for my tank. Lesley |
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