UV Sterilizers Aqua or Coralife?

[RMS18]

After reading a lot about the thoughts on UV Sterilizers I figured well it can't hurt. However with the space I have available for one, will it be effective at all. I can fit a aqua uv 8w or a coralife turbotwist 3x. I have read some bad things about the coralife but yet people are still buying them. Then I see the name aqua on here and other forums frequently. Thoughts?

 

[Khh27]

I've got a aqua ultraviolet 15w FS:
https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/220931/

 

[nbagnardi]

i bought one to help ich management (@Humblefish ) aquaUV or emperor aquatics would be the way to go. with these you really get what you pay for. in my opinion it would be highly beneficial for you to oversize with an adjustable flow return pump. their effectiveness is measured on how much exposure you allow the water to pass through the chamber. read the info on both websites, read read read. these are not cheap but they're the real deal. and my water is so crystal clear now as well.

 

[RMS18]

i bought one to help ich management (@Humblefish ) aquaUV or emperor aquatics would be the way to go. with these you really get what you pay for. in my opinion it would be highly beneficial for you to oversize with an adjustable flow return pump. their effectiveness is measured on how much exposure you allow the water to pass through the chamber. read the info on both websites, read read read. these are not cheap but they're the real deal. and my water is so crystal clear now as well.

What gph pump do you have? The aqua was the one I was leaning towards most. I think the benefit of clearer water is what's most appealing to me as all my fish have gone through a ich breakout and treated with copper, except one guy who's in qt at the moment. How many hours a day do you have it running?

 

[ermartin]

I have one of these in my aqua first aid kit(coralife turbotwist 3x) . I have only really used it twice to kill some junk suspended in the water column that wouldn't go away. both times it worked in about 48hrs and I put it back into storeage

 

[Khh27]

I have a 9w. Turbotwist 3x also I believe unless I sold it a while back

 

[nbagnardi]

I have a 57W aquauv on my display tank that never goes off. I keep a well mixed reef from soft to high end sps. It is fed by an ecotech vectra m1 that allows me to specifically dial in the exact flow rate to kill whatever I want.

 

[RMS18]

I have a 9w. Turbotwist 3x also I believe unless I sold it a while back

I appreciate it but if I pull the trigger it will be for the aqua uv advantage model.

 

[brandon429]

All great info so far I too recommend uv but oversized as far beyond what you can support, it would stink to pay money and fall short of efficacy. I myself ran a pond sterilizer on a 75 in 1996 and have been sold since.

my grandmother paid $500 for a four tube array for a koi pond a few thousand gallons, it didn't help with GHA issues so I used it as a test

on a 75, all bad things died after 48 hrs...I had blue green cyano issues
It was huge and mounted all ugly behind the tank, when living in a college tenement with some ham stuck to the wall as a joke we didn't mind a little tank clutter.



Ran intermittent or continual, just nice to have this option. They can stop some very critical common reef invaders before they start, dinos are one, cyano are another, bacterial blooms and forms of chrysophtes there are many...all non holdfast type algae these uv are great hedges for success

 

[jetmaker]

After reading a lot about the thoughts on UV Sterilizers I figured well it can't hurt. However with the space I have available for one, will it be effective at all. I can fit a aqua uv 8w or a coralife turbotwist 3x. I have read some bad things about the coralife but yet people are still buying them. Then I see the name aqua on here and other forums frequently. Thoughts?

I have been using turbo twist for yrs never a problem never a disease in my tank

 

[Waters]

I am running a large (3' high) Lifegard Aquatics 40W on a mixed reef 105 with great results. I was fighting a Dino issue that is almost entirely gone....water hasn't looked clearer. I highly recommend them. I am not totally sold on the smaller gimmicky (is that a word lol??) UV units though. How effective they are changes based on water clarity, length of time the water is in contact with the UV light, and the strength of the bulb. The smaller units don't allow for enough contact time unless water is pumped through them EXTREMELY slow which makes them pretty ineffective.

 

[miyags]

I run the cuv type 36watts, full time on return pump.

 

[RMS18]

What flow rate are you guys running? I was reading on aqua uv's Web site that is the flow is to slow anything less than 425gph it will kill off the phytoplankton for the corals... from their site:

In salt water reef environments choose a UV that matches your flow rate per hour in the 30,000 or 45,000 columns of our chart. Flow rates in the 75,000 and 90,000 columns will destroy the planktonic food supply for the reef.

 

[brandon429]

the phyto doesn't matter, its incidental. ive been doing 100% wchanges for ten years which kills more. we feed in place of plankton removal, and planktors are too sparse in aged reef tanks to matter much the corals gain aminos and secondary feeding in aquaria without them.

any tank of the month on any forum can be with or without its pelagic plankton and still look the same. A tank not running uv but running carbon can have low planktors simply by being crammed inside the carbon channels awaiting export like other particulates, we really don't factor them much unless its unusual nps systems etc. the typical tank doesn't carry good planktor loading anyway, they carry lots of detritus and excess dissolved waste tho

 

[RMS18]

the phyto doesn't matter, its incidental. ive been doing 100% wchanges for ten years which kills more. we feed in place of plankton removal, and planktors are too sparse in aged reef tanks to matter much the corals gain aminos and secondary feeding in aquaria without them.

any tank of the month on any forum can be with or without its pelagic plankton and still look the same.

What gph is recommended then? I just pulled the trigger on the aquauv.. shopping for a pump now.

 

[brandon429]

I cant answer that because I make my own standards, Ill only use UV that is so grossly oversized theres no way it could fail even if the gph was way too fast. Ive seen many people buy matched uv and have varying results, but never seen oversized uv fail.

on the better name brands, their gph rating w suffice for most intended targets tho

 

[Jimbo]

I have an 18 watt Coralife as far as I know it's working fine. Not sure what would make one UV sterilizer better than the other as long as it's the proper wattage for the amount of water. Guess there could be a difference in bulb quality but what I have is working for me.

 

[miyags]

I run about 620gal/h. through my CUV-136. (36watt) sterilizer. I think its rated for up to 1100gal/h or more?

 

[Doloris rich Mcallister]

I have one of these in my aqua first aid kit(coralife turbotwist 3x) . I have only really used it twice to kill some junk suspended in the water column that wouldn't go away. both times it worked in about 48hrs and I put it back into storeage

Why would you not use it all the time?

 

[RMS18]

The emperors that brs sell, the 18w has a min of 37gph and max 60gph. Anyone know why the emperors have such low max?