Are UV's really worth it???
- Thread starter myerst2
- Start date
UV is great to use to help prevent parasites or at least help. This is especially true with FO or FOWLR tanks. Copper is a horrible product to use with tanks that have LR because it kills any little critters you have that make it Live rock in the first place. You may not see the small critters but they are there and play a very important role and keeping the tank filtered and maintained. My rule of them is simply not to use Copper with SW tanks other than quarantine tanks. UV is Good...........
I use uvs on my reefs and like them.
Uvs kill what passes through them. Most of the microfuana in a reef is benthic and never sees the inside of the tube. They do kill waterborne bacteria and some larvae. Probably no more than your skimmer does.
Their lethality is based on the amount of radiation relative to the size of the organism passing through. Hence, they are very lethal to bacteria,less so to algae and less still to parasites which are relatively large. They wouldn't kill a pod unless one decided to live in there.The amount of radiation the organism receives depends on the length of time it stays in the tube(dwell time or flow rate) and the wattage of the bulb. As an example, the manufacturer's performance chart for the Coral Life 18w turbo twist is: 110gph kills parasites,240gph kills algae, 500gph kills bacteria. The question that is not answered definatively is how many times you must turn a tank over to be effective.
They are very good at keeping your water clear since they kill some green water algae. This helps to keep the glass clean. They are also useful in my opinion in helping fish to avoid infections from bacteria and amyloodinium(aka velvet) which is a dinoflagellate algae.Unless significantly oversized they will probalbly not kill cryptocaryon irritans(ich) which is a large protozoan.
They dop no harm unless you wan't high levels of green water (phytoplankton. If so, supplementation and target feeding are options.
Uvs kill what passes through them. Most of the microfuana in a reef is benthic and never sees the inside of the tube. They do kill waterborne bacteria and some larvae. Probably no more than your skimmer does.
Their lethality is based on the amount of radiation relative to the size of the organism passing through. Hence, they are very lethal to bacteria,less so to algae and less still to parasites which are relatively large. They wouldn't kill a pod unless one decided to live in there.The amount of radiation the organism receives depends on the length of time it stays in the tube(dwell time or flow rate) and the wattage of the bulb. As an example, the manufacturer's performance chart for the Coral Life 18w turbo twist is: 110gph kills parasites,240gph kills algae, 500gph kills bacteria. The question that is not answered definatively is how many times you must turn a tank over to be effective.
They are very good at keeping your water clear since they kill some green water algae. This helps to keep the glass clean. They are also useful in my opinion in helping fish to avoid infections from bacteria and amyloodinium(aka velvet) which is a dinoflagellate algae.Unless significantly oversized they will probalbly not kill cryptocaryon irritans(ich) which is a large protozoan.
They dop no harm unless you wan't high levels of green water (phytoplankton. If so, supplementation and target feeding are options.
Copper in a FOWLR is definantly a BIG no-no! That is unless you never want any type of invert to live in there. I have a FO tank thus I have dosed copper before.
I have used UV's in previous tanks & mostly it helped with algae controll. I didn't have any issues with parasites b4 or after adding the UV so no change there. The glass on the tank didn't need to be wipped down as much & I figured IF I did get something in the tank the UV would of helped keep it on the sick fish.
I beleive one of the biggest mistakes people do when getting a UV is they go to small. The flow needs to be so slow & the aquarium volume so large that it really doesn't do anything. For a 150g I wouldn't get anything smaller then a 40w unit, preferably 60-80w+ for there to be any significant gain/improvement.
Which remings me, I still haven't hooked up my UV.... been sitting in the garage for 4 months now.....
I have used UV's in previous tanks & mostly it helped with algae controll. I didn't have any issues with parasites b4 or after adding the UV so no change there. The glass on the tank didn't need to be wipped down as much & I figured IF I did get something in the tank the UV would of helped keep it on the sick fish.
I beleive one of the biggest mistakes people do when getting a UV is they go to small. The flow needs to be so slow & the aquarium volume so large that it really doesn't do anything. For a 150g I wouldn't get anything smaller then a 40w unit, preferably 60-80w+ for there to be any significant gain/improvement.
Which remings me, I still haven't hooked up my UV.... been sitting in the garage for 4 months now.....
AquaKnight
Active member
UV will not do anything for parasites. You're talking about a tenth, of a tenth, of 1% that the parasite will pass through the UV before infecting a fish. If the parasite is present, any outbreak would easily outpace a huge UV on a tiny tank. But for algae/bacteria control, since those are always present, they do a decent job. Is it worth it? You bet, the operating costs is pretty cheap, a $15 bulb every six months, only if salt, or carbon, or DI resin was anywhere near that cheap per month by itself...
JustinReef
New member
Ich for example live for a few days in rocks, sand bed, ect. and are not afftected by the UV in this time. Then thousands of them begin their free swimming stage, looking for a host...Now the UV will catch some but only those that flow through it. The chances are not great especially since enough of the ich will have found a host way before they ever get anywhere near the UV. The ones that do not find a host will die anyways. Once on the fish, they are not affected by the UV where they feed and fall off directly to the bottom of the tank and rocks once again...UV is great IF the parasite get into the unit but since parasites like ich spend more time on fish and in substrate than free swimming, its not very effective. Now I guess if ich were always free swimming, it would be much more effective.
UV helps algae though...Really you should not need UV for parasites anyways. A newly set up tank that is fallow and cycling for a month and then all new live stock is QT'd for at least a month, will NOT have parasites like ich to deal with. Anything new going into the tank is QT'd...from crabs to macro algae. Its that simple and easy not to ever have to deal with ich. I hate the theory that you cannot have an ich free tank.
Ok but with enough turn over and a large sterilizer you could thin them out a bit perhaps more than one in ten thousand. By the way, they swim twice going in and coming out of the host.I'll say it once more, a sterilizer is not a cure for cryptocaryon irritans; quarantine and appropriate treatment is. There are other parasites and pathenogens that the uv can help with and overall I think they are a very good tool.
JustinReef
New member
Exactly, so if your QTing and doing things right, there should be no need for a UV... Its one of those things that is just not very effective and theres a better way to prevent parasites. Instead of using a very ineffective UV, just do things right in the beginning. Once you have kept fish long enough, you should "get" this. Its not fair to the fish to not QT and do whats best for them. I get really annoyed when people kill thousands and thousands of fish a year because they would rather not QT and just try things like UV or these totally useless new "reef safe" meds. Even hypo salinity is quite questionable. It does work if done right but most of the time, you see people with a re-infestation a month or two later.
And I did mention them swimming twice but the second time is very short and again, a UV is not going to catch many in this stage.
JustinReef
New member
No because coraline is linked to calcium which is not affected by a UV. But again, its not going to do a heck of a lot for algae either. A UV will only effect free swimming algae spores and not algae already on rocks or glass.
I really am not at all a fan of UV...ozone is a thousand times better for algae control. Ozone will also kill parasites, although I wouldn't say its super effective for that. Ozone also eliminates ammonia and nitrite as a bonus.
A uv sterlizer is not a cure for ich but it has many benefits noted earlier and is a usefull tool.
It does not negatively effect coraline growth. It only effects what passes through it.Coraline is encrusting.It does not kill hair algae either.
Sometimes,no many times,aquarist faced with ich in a reef tank choose not to remove all fish and take a tank down( because it's too hard to catch the fish and/or ripping a mature reef apart to catch them will devastate corals and other living things), even though,quarantine, treatment and a fallow tank are the only proven ways to erradicate ich. In these cases where the aquarist chooses to wait the 11 months for the ich strain to perish and hope for the best the use of a sterilizer is prudent and it should help avoid some of the extremely nasty secondary infections including some bacterial infections and the dinoflagellate algae amyloodinium (velvet) which is vituallly always fatal without prompt aggressive treatment.The water is simply more sterile which should be of benefit to fish which are already weakened by cryptocaryon.
It does not negatively effect coraline growth. It only effects what passes through it.Coraline is encrusting.It does not kill hair algae either.
Sometimes,no many times,aquarist faced with ich in a reef tank choose not to remove all fish and take a tank down( because it's too hard to catch the fish and/or ripping a mature reef apart to catch them will devastate corals and other living things), even though,quarantine, treatment and a fallow tank are the only proven ways to erradicate ich. In these cases where the aquarist chooses to wait the 11 months for the ich strain to perish and hope for the best the use of a sterilizer is prudent and it should help avoid some of the extremely nasty secondary infections including some bacterial infections and the dinoflagellate algae amyloodinium (velvet) which is vituallly always fatal without prompt aggressive treatment.The water is simply more sterile which should be of benefit to fish which are already weakened by cryptocaryon.
lesleybird
New member
Hi, I do not know where you get your information. If your only experience is with a UV that takes a $15 dollar bulb then I would not listen to you. My UV is a high powered 55 watt bulb that costs $60 for the replacement bulb. I run this Aquamedic with twisting flow pattern with a slow 400 gallon an hour on my 190 gallon which is a 2X turn over per hour. If one runs a low powered UV with a fast turnover the dwell time will not be long enough to harm the ich swimmers at all. Ich swimmers need a high power with a low flow rate (long dwell time) to harm or kill them so that they cannot continue their life cycle. Yes, with a 2 times flow rate maybe some ich swimmers can attach to the fish before they make it to the UV, but the infection rate is slowed a whole lot, enough so that the fish do not die from ich until their bodies develop enough immunity to fight off the ich themselves. It keeps an ich out break from getting out of hand.
I can tell the difference with the UV. If one gets a low wattage UV and runs the water through it really fast for the wattage, or does not turn the tank over through it at least 2 times an hour then it probably won't work. When one reads of the maximum flow rate through a UV listed by the manufacturer it is not at this fast flow rate that you will harm ich, at the fastest rate it may only harm algea spores and bacteria.
I really think my has helped with my ich, but it will also kill free floating live plankton which is food for corals, I have a fish only, live rock tank so it doesn't matter. I would think one could use it with corals if one uses dead plankton type food. Another consideration is that the UV also warms up the water some so I only need half the heater wattage for my tank. Lesley
I will just say this, on my FOWLR tanks before UV....lost lots of fish to disease, ich, velvet.......AFTER UV.....no problems whatsoever. So 2 years without I lost fish I don't even want to think about particularly when introducing new livestock. I follow the same procedures and care and feeding on my tanks with UV installed...
My experience? I would say the UV is as important as a good Skimmer.
JC
My experience? I would say the UV is as important as a good Skimmer.
JC
The points about size are important . The larger the uv,the more effective it will be against larger organisms . Cryptocaryon irritans(ich) is a relatively large protozoan and would require a large uv for any effectiveness.Bacteria and algae are smaller and require less radiation for lethality. Even then it will only effect those parasites that pass through it .It obviously won't touch those in the fish or substrate.
They are pretty pricey. I use them and find them helpfull. I just received a low budget Odyssea 36w model for 59.95 with and extra bulb for 16.95. The unit looks good but I haven't tried it yet.
They are pretty pricey. I use them and find them helpfull. I just received a low budget Odyssea 36w model for 59.95 with and extra bulb for 16.95. The unit looks good but I haven't tried it yet.
Patrick12
Crypt Assassin
UV sterilizers do have their merits, but any effectiveness in parasite control is really overstated. They will help clear your water of free floating algaes and many bacteria, but it is essentially useless against cryptocaryon irritans. The parasites just don't all make it into the water column to then pass thru your UV sterilizer. Sure a few may pass thru and if you run the flow low enough, they will get killed off, but it is really akin to fighting a forrest fire with a garden hose. Not trying to be a naysayer, just trying to help you out if you are making your purchase decision based on this aspect of UV use.
matthewscars
New member
Right on point. I had a 55 FOWLR and had a ich break out while my UV was running for weeks prior.
It clears the water, runs up your electric bill, and kills maybe ~10% of all cryptocaryon.
I only run one because I bought it years ago and and it's one of those 'why not' deals.
Spend the extra money on a good QT instead if you dont have one already.
It clears the water, runs up your electric bill, and kills maybe ~10% of all cryptocaryon.
I only run one because I bought it years ago and and it's one of those 'why not' deals.
Spend the extra money on a good QT instead if you dont have one already.
