Re: The first fry from L260
Posted: 01 Mar 2011, 20:38
Yeah, I need some more power at the UV to kill the parasites.apistomaster wrote:I already mentioned that I doubted whether your fish had Ich but just for the sake of discussion, if you hope that UV will protect your fish from that disease, consider this:
Most UV ratings are for how much UV radiation with a wave length of 253.7 nanometers are required to kill algae. It takes 22,000 microwatts/cm2 to kill Chorella algae.
It takes 336,000 microwatts/cm2 to kill Ichthyophthrius tomites.
What this means is that most aquarists use UV units which are grossly under powered to have any real effect against most fish diseases. Furthermore, a typical UV source loses 40% of its effects after 6 months. To use an effective level of UV, one needs to seriously up the power. This soon reaches a very expensive level to fight that which can prevented by strict quarantine procedures and those are much cheaper than relying on UV, imho. Just something to consider before investing in UV.
Information is from the book, Aquaculture Engineering, sometimes referred to as the aquaculture "bible", Frederick W. Wheaton, reprint 1985. Hard cover, 728 pages. $99.25 from http://www.aquaticeco.com. Cat. # WQB3
But this was my only possibility to try just one more thing to stop the disease..