I wish I would record my adventures haha. So as you probably saw in a few of my posts. I use the intake UV for surface agitation. Literally eliminates the need to run bubblers. Well depends which one you run. Aquatop UV’s have a bar that runs multiple ports that awesome for water flow.
Now to the chem side of things. The models I run are the best thing for keeping water free of algae bloom or even bacterial bloom. One reason why I personally will not hesitate dosing prazi cut with everclear 90% for easier mixing. Not long ago I forgot the unit off on one of the QT tanks and boy did the bac bloom like never before. Turned on the UV cleared in less than 24 hours. The fish where breathing just fine no issues or deaths. To consider these UV units as the end all be all for QT wouldn’t go that far, but they, in my opinion, help improve water and thus need to do above the call of duty maintaining of the QT tank.
Before I started using intank UV I would dread QTing haha. No longer an issue. I wish I would get it in my head to document these things better along side pictures. In conclusion it’s a tool I personally would recommend to anyone using copper power or safe.
You need to be REALLY careful using solvents with praziquantel. I've killed fish due to the resulting bacterial blooms (if I used a bit too much solvent) even with good aeration. I'm basically a lazy aquarist, and pushing prazi through a net takes time, especially with large systems. If I thought that solvents were a good idea, I sure would be using them!
Yes, UV will clear free floating algae and bacterial blooms, but I was talking about the sales point of these units controlling disease.
UV sterilizers
Ultraviolet (UV) sterilizers are also sold as a “cure” for
Cryptocaryon. The problem is that most hobbyist-sized UV sterilizers do not have the power to make an effective kill on the relatively large
Cryptocaryon parasite. Additionally, UV sterilizers are effective only on the tomite/theront stage, as this is the only point where the parasite is even present in the water column.
For velvet,
Amyloodinium, the fallacy here is that tomites/theronts
must leave the fish. Actually, some of them may get caught up in the fish’s mucus and stay attached until they become infective trophonts again. For
Cryptocaryon, the tomites/theronts do seem to need to leave the fish, but with side stream application of UV (where only a portion of water passes through the unit) DWELL TIME becomes the limiting factor. Only a portion of the theronts are killed before enough of them attach to the fish to continue the infection. This means that UV sterilization will not eliminate active
Cryptocaryon infections from a single aquarium. Where it does have benefit is in eliminating tomites as they pass through a filtration system from one discrete tank to another (like in a public aquarium or fisheries lab). Decades ago, diatom filters were touted as cures for ich and velvet. The same issue applies with them; there are adherent forms of these protozoans that can continue to infect the fish without ever having to leave the fish’s body. Even if they do, the same “dwell time” factor means that some theronts will still be present in the water column to infect the fish.
A recent study (Ge-Ling, 2022) indicates that the UV dose required to kill
Cryptocaryon theronts/tomites is 185,000 uw/S/cm2. They do go on however, to conclude: “ …both ozone and UV are ineffective in controlling infection within an individual aquarium because of the adhesive nature of
C. irritans tomonts (Ma et al., 2017). Therefore, the focus on UV and ozone treatment should prevent live theronts flow into aquaculture ponds. Second, the tomonts are strongly resistant to UV or ozone than theronts, implying that recommended production doses cannot wholly kill tomonts….”
