UV Sterilizers: Are the benefits a MYTH or a REALITY?

[Charlie C]

Ok, I am overwhelmed.

Not worried about ick but........to control algae and good water clarity for my 165 gal mixed reef....which UV is best bang for the buck and long term reliability?

Advantage if it works well with my Apex.

While it’s not the most recommended, I have an old TurboTwist from 2007 that’s still in use. Have been happy with it. I replaced the bulb about 6 months ago, which I found on amazon for ~$12.00. The aquarium trade prices are much more. The TurboTwist version I use is recommended for about 240 gallons - my tank is a 125 gallon with about 20 gallons in the sump. Using a small pump with about 60 gal/hr flow, for parasite control. Good luck with your choice.

 

[Xero]

Ok, I am overwhelmed.

Not worried about ick but........to control algae and good water clarity for my 165 gal mixed reef....which UV is best bang for the buck and long term reliability?

Advantage if it works well with my Apex.

I actually had issues with UV ballasts causing interference with the FMM module (for flow meters), to the point that Jon at neptune support called me and freakin told me to wrap my cables in tin-foil. I was bout to tell him to wrap his head in tinfoil. I can't make things like this up.....I moved the ballast away from it all, and it mostly solved those issues.


needless to say, you made me chuckle.

 

[Flippers4pups]

As others have said, hobby grade UV's are fine for algae and bacterial issues, parasites, not so much.

 

[scardall]

what size tank is it? 50gph on a tank under 50g would give you exposure times of over 360,000uw/cm2 at the rate of 1x turnover per hour. That's enough to kill many things, including possibly ich.

If you want to target algae reduction as well as parasite reduction, you could try to size a larger unit to get you that same exposure at 2x turnover. Like a 25w at 100gph, a 40w at 200gph, 57w around 250gph, and so on.....all these would be hitting that 360k number at those flow rates, but what that turnover rate is will be your tank size divided by the GPH....

All this is going on the assumption you need 300k to 800k to kill ich, and that these manufacturers are majorly short-changing us in regards to what parasite reduction really means.

I have a 75g mixed reef. I'm now look at a tmc vector 6 ,25W unit.

 

[Xero]

I have a 75g mixed reef. I'm now look at a tmc vector 6 ,25W unit.

25 or 40w would be my choice, depending how big your sump. My 60+20g sump has a 25w.

 

[Acrocrazy725]

Had my aqua UV in operation for a year. Ordered a small gold rim tang for my 100gal from friend who is a wholesaler on the side. When fish came in my small tang was a four 4+ inch fish. I had no choice But to take it. Took a week to get him to eat, but he did and was fine for four months.
Down the road, I upgraded my sump and made some changes and forgot to turn off UV when I turned sump off and unknown at time to me, burned out bulb. It was off for a week when I first began to notice ich in my gold rim. I figured out UV was broken had to order a bulb, by that time fish was covered. i later caught him and treated him, he was the healthiest looking sick fish you have ever seen. Made it a week and died. UV are great. I run them on all my tanks. I have never had the problems I read about here. It is all possible that it is all a coincidence. I am no scientist, but if it isn’t broke don’t fix it. It works for me! It is extra insurence and peace of mind for a very expensive hobby. Just my personal experience.

 

[Streetcred]

Why do we seem to be getting a lot of these controversial posts of late ? Click baiting age old slanging matches ? Poor show Reef2Reef.

Unless at the required mechanical size and flow rate, having a UV on your tank is a largely a placebo. Let's look at some of the literature:

• 10 watts per 75 gals
• water flow <2x tank size per day
• <25 watts not practical on tanks over 20 gals
• Lamp life <6 months

UV will only likely kill what goes through the tube at the recommended flow rate ... it won't kill what doesn't go through.

Where it is useful is to kill waterborne algae outbreaks.

 

[Streetcred]

Had my aqua UV in operation for a year. Ordered a small gold rim tang for my 100gal from friend who is a wholesaler on the side. When fish came in my small tang was a four 4+ inch fish. I had no choice But to take it. Took a week to get him to eat, but he did and was fine for four months.
Down the road, I upgraded my sump and made some changes and forgot to turn off UV when I turned sump off and unknown at time to me, burned out bulb. It was off for a week when I first began to notice ich in my gold rim. I figured out UV was broken had to order a bulb, by that time fish was covered. i later caught him and treated him, he was the healthiest looking sick fish you have ever seen. Made it a week and died. UV are great. I run them on all my tanks. I have never had the problems I read about here. It is all possible that it is all a coincidence. I am no scientist, but if it isn’t broke don’t fix it. It works for me! It is extra insurence and peace of mind for a very expensive hobby. Just my personal experience.

UV will not cure ich outbreaks ... refer to the ich trophant life cycle.

 

[Streetcred]

UV isn't a myth. It's a requirement for any coral tank for me.

It doesn't kill bacteria, or pods. Bacteria lives on surfaces (you can't cycle a tank by changing water). Pods aren't generally stupid enough to get sucked into pipes (baby peppermint shrimp is another story) and it likely wouldn't kill them anyway, they aren't single-celled organisms.

I don't have "BJD that spreads around killing everything" in my tanks....i don't have dinos...i don't have cyano....i can tell you about how UV works by telling you about all the problems I DONT have, that I constantly hear other people having. And i run multiple tanks, with multiple different methods. It's always the ones I didn't have UV on that end up with stupid problems, and then they get UV.

You can drive around your car with no insurance, just don't hit me.

I have a 500g coral tank for over 20 years ... never any UV ... at the right sizing it is very expensive and even then it's so hit and miss why bother ?

Properly sized and installed, it will kill anything in the water column that comes in front of the lamp ... including bacteria ... think how carbon dosing grows bacteria which feeds coral, if it weren't in the water column it would not be coral food ... and neither would your skimmer take it out.

If you have car insurance don't think you can drive into me !

 

[Streetcred]

Just a couple uncertainties keeping me from pulling the trigger on one.
I am waiting till they are more innovative or advanced. I would like to see UVs coming out with digital flow displays and bulb intensity or bulb life. That will remove the quest work of setting them up and when to recalibrate. There are many imitators and not enough tests or monitors to remove the grey areas of using/tuning one. Many say it’s one of those items that you don’t always know for sure if it is working correctly. I would like to see Clarity there. I want to buy one, but not just for piece of mind. I want to buy a UV that has settings preprogrammed for switching between pest control and algae control. It would be epic to see a BRS investigates video on this. A video where UVs are tested against strains of algae and parasites. I’m sure @Humblefish could spare some parasites to the cause hah

You will be waiting a lot longer for 'innovation or advance'. Apart from new plastic bodies they have been the same for as long as I can remember ... even in medical use the systems have limited 'innovation and advance". Just saying ... you must have better things to do ?

 

[Streetcred]

They work provided there powerful enough, including ich management and I wouldn’t run a reef tank without one.

They don't work in management of ich ... refer to the trophant cycle. They do work for algae in the water column ... and water clarity. Otherwise nothing more than placebo.

 

[SPR1968]

They don't work in management of ich ... refer to the trophant cycle. They do work for algae in the water column ... and water clarity. Otherwise nothing more than placebo.

Part of the ich life cycle you refer to, is the free swimming stage and if it passes through a UV-C at high enough power, around 72000 micro watts/sec/sqcm it should kill it. It’s not a cure for ich, it’s a method of ich management as I said. So if you using it for this like myself, I’ve got a very powerful unit and low flow.

I use a DD Professional 80w UV-C which is roughly equivalent to a 160w conventional unit.To be effective you need to know the power rating and then do a bit of maths to achieve the correct flow rate. If you don’t, and as already said, many hobby grade UV’s are not powerful enough to be effective

It will also kill anything else that passes through it, provided the power is high enough. Thats why you don’t run one when setting up a new tank with bottled bacteria or when adding additional bacteria to a system.

 

[Belgian Anthias]

As some bacteria or and viruses may kill parasites and other pathogens, using UV-C at a too low dose may be favorable for the development of pathogens, instead of lowering the pressure. If a UV-C is used it should be able to kill everything passing true it, otherwise the cure may be worse as the disease. Also, low power (hobby) units are able to kill everything ( if the lamp has the correct UV (C) output, not all UV lamps are suitable, some produce Ozon), the flow rate can be adjusted to obtain the objective.
P.R.Escobal calculated that to tread all the water in the system once a day, the flow rate must be +- 1x the system content each hour over 24H. This because treated water is constantly mixed with untreated water.
(Escobal, Pedro Ramon. Aquatic systems engineering: devices and how they function. 1st ed. Oxnard, Calif: Dimension Engineering Press, 1996.)

 

[brandon429]

Streetcred

all the careful sizing we’ve been able to forego just by using cheap oversized pond sterilizers off Amazon in my work threads. rated for fifteen hundred gallons freshwater pond for $150 works amazingly well, space allowing, across reef tanks of typical sizes. the gross over sizing makes up for flow rates, we never needed to do anything other than get water through them. low quality build UV compared to $900 pentair never mattered...not going to run them always on. We got the most mileage out of the cheap amazon ones.

The detail sizing and flow specs were needed only when maximizing space or heat issues, or for plans on long term applications. Even for nanos, on several we’ve ran up to fifty watts to absolutely hammer dinos over the years with no harm no overheating. We typically combine full disassembly cleaning first, and apply UV in the low organics reserve/ low target mass reserve condition which is polar opposite of how most would apply it.

 

[tamanning]

I have never owned one and when I have run into the problems you guys are speaking of I always search out the cause and do my best to correct it. I try to run my reef as natural as possible. I have tried to find a balance between my inhabitants and my bio .

 

[Lowell Lemon]

[/QUOTE]

Why do we seem to be getting a lot of these controversial posts of late ? Click baiting age old slanging matches ? Poor show Reef2Reef.

Unless at the required mechanical size and flow rate, having a UV on your tank is a largely a placebo. Let's look at some of the literature:

• 10 watts per 75 gals
• water flow <2x tank size per day
• <25 watts not practical on tanks over 20 gals
• Lamp life <6 months

UV will only likely kill what goes through the tube at the recommended flow rate ... it won't kill what doesn't go through.

Where it is useful is to kill waterborne algae outbreaks.

Of course UV does not work and that is why ICU and PCU in many hospitals use UVC to clean the rooms between patients. Better check your opinion at the door of your local hospital sir!

 

[Lowell Lemon]

They don't work in management of ich ... refer to the trophant cycle. They do work for algae in the water column ... and water clarity. Otherwise nothing more than placebo.

Just conjecture and opinion based on how many examples? We had success across a broad spectrum of customers for decades including many large scale aquarium stores! Ignorance of proper usage usually results in poor performance.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

I have never owned one and when I have run into the problems you guys are speaking of I always search out the cause and do my best to correct it. I try to run my reef as natural as possible. I have tried to find a balance between my inhabitants and my bio .

Proper husbandry provides success in aquariums. Most people are to impatient to study and use biodiversity, invert and fish additions to their advantage.

 

[tamanning]

Proper husbandry provides success in aquariums. Most people are to impatient to study and use biodiversity, invert and fish additions to their advantage.

Thank you that is quite a compliment.

 

[Xero]

I have a 500g coral tank for over 20 years ... never any UV ... at the right sizing it is very expensive and even then it's so hit and miss why bother ?

Properly sized and installed, it will kill anything in the water column that comes in front of the lamp ... including bacteria ... think how carbon dosing grows bacteria which feeds coral, if it weren't in the water column it would not be coral food ... and neither would your skimmer take it out.

If you have car insurance don't think you can drive into me !

I carbon dose tanks that run UV. Nothing you're saying here pans out in reality. You can talk theoretically all day to me, but, I run multiple tanks, some with UV, some without, not just one big tank, and I see results across many systems, not just one. In fact - I purposely run some of my tanks with different methods, because it avoids this kind of close-minded speak. Please, try things, first, before talking so assertively about them.