UV : In dept answers!

[dstoneburg]

Ive come upon a coralife twist UV sterilizer and would like some information on it. I did a search and many posts went something like this...
person 1-tell me about uv, i need kill ick
person 2-uv no kill ick
person 3- uv killed my ick
Now my question is would it be more beneficial for me to use or sell. Ive heard it do many things from creating crystal clear water to curing ick, obviously the latter is false. Whats the point of running one?
I don't care about ick, I practice actively QTing everything. I'm wondering if it will provide a better envoirment for my fish and or create "crystal clear water"..?

 

[stdreb27]

Originally Posted by dstoneburg
Ive come upon a coralife twist UV sterilizer and would like some information on it. I did a search and many posts went something like this...
person 1-tell me about uv, i need kill ick
person 2-uv no kill ick
person 3- uv killed my ick
Now my question is would it be more beneficial for me to use or sell. Ive heard it do many things from creating crystal clear water to curing ick, obviously the latter is false. Whats the point of running one?
I don't care about ick, I practice actively QTing everything. I'm wondering if it will provide a better envoirment for my fish and or create "crystal clear water"..?
I'm it will clear up your water if suspended algae is what is making your water cloudy. Ich isn't suspended in the water column so it won't really solve anything there. If you have floating poo or other garbage in your water, and not algae I don't think it will solve anything.

 

[dstoneburg]

So whats the point? Im having a hard time narrowing down what they do? Are they literally only used to control algae?

 

[lesleybird]

Hi, I had an outbreak of ich in my 190 gallon and the Kick Ick that I had used on another tank in the past was working some but not getting rid of the ich problem completely. All the fish were still alive after two weeks of the Kick Ick but still had some ich spots. I got a 55 watt UV and used it along with the Kick Ick for two more weeks with the skimmer turned off and weekly 20 percent water changes (because of not running the skimmer which may take the med out of the water). I stopped the Kick Ich after a month and am still running the UV with a slow flow rate of 350 gallons per hour. I have not seen any ich spots in 6 weeks and all my fish are healthy and eating. I think the UV is killing the swimmers and the fish that survived the ich outbreak (all but one) now have some natural immunity to fight off the ich.
The UV's can kill the ich swimmers before they attach to the fish if the wattage is high enough and the flow through the thing is slow enough. This may not get to all the ich, but reduces the numbers a whole lot so the fish usually don't die until they develop some immunity to the ich. As for algea it will not kill any hair or green algea on your glass or rocks...only the algea in the water. I also got a little cleaner goby who survived a bad case of ich and also ate the ich off of my large angelfish when we had ich. What wattage of UV do you have? and what is the size of your tank?

 

[aquaknight]

Bottom line IMO, it's not going to hurt anything, why not run it? The only downside being the costs of a new bulb every 6-8 months. Don't let people scare you about UV killing pods. The UV would have to have an absurdly low flow rate, under 2gph per watt and even then, the pod population would be able to repopulate to offset that. Think about how many a mandarin sucks down a day and they're about to adjust. And also, if you run the UV inline after a prefilter like your suppose too, next to zero pods would be traveling through the UV.
I use a 15w on my 125 and have noticed a reducing in nusiance algae. It wouldn't converter a tank full of hair algae to sparkling clean, but it will help.

 

[dstoneburg]

Its a coralife twist 3x. Debating throwing it on a 90g. Should I put it on my QT in the meantime?

 

[lesleybird]

Originally Posted by dstoneburg
Its a coralife twist 3x. Debating throwing it on a 90g. Should I put it on my QT in the meantime?
What is wattage of the twist 3x? This will determine how much flow for ich control. Unless it is the strongest of the ones they make it might not control the ich.

 

[stdreb27]

Originally Posted by dstoneburg
So whats the point? Im having a hard time narrowing down what they do? Are they literally only used to control algae?
They cook life stuff floating in the water column. Algae, bacteria, and gives a sunburn and maybe cooks parasites depending on how long they were exposed.
If you are dealing with cloudy water, what color is the water?