UV install opinion

[mmorrison55]

I am adding a new sump in my fish room, and I’m taking the opportunity to redo and clean up my plumbing. I was not planning to re-install the UV into a return line. I stumbled across an older BRS video where they said one of the mistakes people make is not installing into a return line and only using a closed loop in the sump.

This got me thinking if this really is detrimental to just have it on a closed loop in the sump?

Some of the high end sump makers such as MRC and deltec, have a chamber in the sump that just exposes sump water to UV light before it makes its way to the return chamber, So it’s not directly plumbed into the return line either, and is more or less behaving the same way a closed loop would if a pump or manifold feeding the UV goes from one sump chamber to another.

I am planning to exit the UV into the return chamber, so all the water coming out of the UV should make its way into the display anyways.

So interested if anyone has noticed a difference in water clarity, algae growth, or parasites when plumbing their uv via a sump closed loop vs return line installation?

 

[PhishEDELIC]

The whole idea with plumbing your UV inline with your return is that 100% of the water and therefore 100% of what is ever bad swimming around in your tank goes past the UV light. In theory, if your not bottle necking the water in a hose entering the UV all the bad stuff could either go around the UV or in the case of just a UV casting light into a chamber may not pass by the light close enough that the intensity is enough to kill said bad things. Hope I explained that right.

 

[petcellar]

Agree with @PhishEDELIC as to the reasoning. I plumbed my UV recently into my return for the same reason.

I think the real question is whether or not this theoretical concern makes a real world difference. I don't know.

I'm sure others will chime in.

 

[mmorrison55]

The whole idea with plumbing your UV inline with your return is that 100% of the water and therefore 100% of what is ever bad swimming around in your tank goes past the UV light. In theory, if your not bottle necking the water in a hose entering the UV all the bad stuff could either go around the UV or in the case of just a UV casting light into a chamber may not pass by the light close enough that the intensity is enough to kill said bad things. Hope I explained that right.

I wasn’t thinking about it in that regard, and can see where the mrc chamber style would contact all the water because it has to pass through that chamber to get to the return.

My next thought is, I have dual return pumps, so unless I had dual UV’s plumbed into each return pump, there would be 50% of the water not making it through the uv on that particular return cycle.

Im certain over time, all the water in the sump would pass over the uv light no matter how you have it plugged,bed, but I can see it being more efficient and potentially more effective if you had just one return pump that had everything going through it and the uv.

Before I even started this new sump, I had it only going through one return pump, but now I’m wondering if I was not being effective as I could have been had I had just the one pump feeding both return lines or if I should have had two uv’s plumbed in-line.

Im thinking I may now go dual uv’s. Added benefit of dual uv’s is I could run them at different speeds, one for parasites and the other for algae.