shortbusldtang
Member
Mark
UV sterilizer question.........
- Thread starter shortbusldtang
- Start date
Mark
shortbusldtang
Member
Anyone? Gees...
scsinet
Active Member
Okay two things...
First, to clarify... a UV unit will NOT solve an ich outbreak. They will help to some extent to prevent an ich outbreak from occuring, but once the parasite gets a foothold, they exist in such numbers that there is no way a UV unit can bring them under control. Besides, ich lives in the substrate or on the fish, it spends very little time in it's life cycle in the water column where it can get picked up and sent through the unit. Long story short, if you have a ich outbreak, don't bother with a UV at this point... too late.
Second, the LFS is giving you some very bad advice to tell you hook them up to your canister filter. The larger the organism you are trying to kill with UV, the longer the organism must be exposed to the UV light (dwell time/contact time). Ich is very big compared to bacteria, algae spores, etc. It requires very long time periods in front of the lamp to be affected. For parasites, I recommend 5gph/watt of UV power. So for a 6x, which is an 18W unit, no more than about 90-100 gph. A canister filter provides far more than 100gph of flow, so you won't kill any ich with such a setup. Instead, you need to either setup a bypass valve rig to shunt the majority of the flow past the unit so only about 100gph goes through, or you need to set up a dedicated pump to feed the unit and return water to the tank. Many people use a maxi-jet powerhead for this purpose.
First, to clarify... a UV unit will NOT solve an ich outbreak. They will help to some extent to prevent an ich outbreak from occuring, but once the parasite gets a foothold, they exist in such numbers that there is no way a UV unit can bring them under control. Besides, ich lives in the substrate or on the fish, it spends very little time in it's life cycle in the water column where it can get picked up and sent through the unit. Long story short, if you have a ich outbreak, don't bother with a UV at this point... too late.
Second, the LFS is giving you some very bad advice to tell you hook them up to your canister filter. The larger the organism you are trying to kill with UV, the longer the organism must be exposed to the UV light (dwell time/contact time). Ich is very big compared to bacteria, algae spores, etc. It requires very long time periods in front of the lamp to be affected. For parasites, I recommend 5gph/watt of UV power. So for a 6x, which is an 18W unit, no more than about 90-100 gph. A canister filter provides far more than 100gph of flow, so you won't kill any ich with such a setup. Instead, you need to either setup a bypass valve rig to shunt the majority of the flow past the unit so only about 100gph goes through, or you need to set up a dedicated pump to feed the unit and return water to the tank. Many people use a maxi-jet powerhead for this purpose.