How did you plumb your UV?

[Sartium]

In 3 to 5 business days after Black Friday somewhere out there is man in a brown suit driving a big brown truck full of boxes that will bring joy and happiness to good little reefers all across the country (top that Santa!) When he stops at my house I will be the proud owner of a new shiny Emperor Aquatics Smart UV 25 Watt. I think I have read through the owners manual about 5 times now and I am trying to make a decision on how to plumb it. My current design will be based off this picture in the owners manual...

The idea here is the inlet valve takes water from the return pump and is adjusted to get the flow down to about 60 gph (what I am shooting for) and the output valve is wide open and hooks back up to your return line to take the water back up to the DT. My question is if my return line is running around 400 gph or so wont this create some vacuum pressure on the return side with the water passing past the opening and start sucking water through faster than 60 gph? Or am I over thinking this?

Is it better to pull water off the return line and then have a separate line running up to the DT?

What have you all done?

 

[Waters]

I actually bought a second pump and ran the UV independently from the main plumbing.....that way it can be adjusted without any worries. My UV is rated at over 1000gph and I have it adjusted down to about 600gph. Not sure if that helps you or not lol....just throwing it out there as an option.

 

[143MPCo]

I've also done as @Waters noted above and had no issues, on my 150g I upgraded the return pump and plumbed the UV and other reactors directly off of it removing the pump out of the sump and saving me a little coin.

 

[Sartium]

No that really does help, this was the other option I was considering. So in this setup my concern was just looks, do you guys just have a second return line hung over the rim of your tank or are there some more clever ways of hiding it? I do like this option better because it seems like it would be easier to control the flow through the UV.

My tank is a 90G with a corner overflow, there are only two holes drilled in the glass at the bottom of my overflow and not really room for a 3rd to run a second return line.

 

[Waters]

I had the advantage of having my storage/furnace room directly behind my tank. The pump sits in the sump, goes through the wall, around the furnance lol, and back into the sump. Because of the design of my UV (both the size and because I wanted to hard plumb it), the UV had to sit back away from my DT.

 

[Sartium]

Oh OK you just dump it right back into the return chamber of your sump? I dint even think of that!

What pump are you using to feed the UV if I can ask?

 

[FarmerTy]

What size tank do you have? What are you trying to achieve with it? Water clarification or sterilization? The answer of how much GPH will depend on those answers.

I originally had mine plumbed off a manifold from my return pump. Then I noticed that it was much less effective in that configuration because really, how many free swimming ich parasites will actually go over the overflow and make it into my sump to be sterilized on the way back up to the DT? It's better at the source in my opinion. It made more sense when my powder blue that was living in my sump for 3 months ich free was placed in the DT and broke out. He wasn't even attacked or pestered by any fish. He was just closer to where all the ich was now so it just made sense to pull water directly from the DT to treat... because that's where all the parasites and hosts are at.

So I got an extra pump, put it behind one of my large rock structures in the DT, ran a PVC pipe along the overflow and pump the water straight up into the UV sterilizer that's sitting on top in my canopy. Then the return is fed through the return overflow to go into the sump. I also run about 280-300 GPH for a 57-watt AquaUV sterilizer on a 215-gallon tank. That gives me close to the 336,000 mW/cm2 needed for suggested sterilization of marine protists, such as ich. AquaUV states only 90,000 mW/cm2 is needed and Emperor states 180,000 mW/cm2 is needed, literature suggests 336,000 mW/cm2 but I will admit that is a extrapolated number from freshwater ich exposure tests. I have not seen any experimental results on saltwater ich exposure ratings. I'd rather shoot towards the higher number in this case.

 

[Sartium]

@FarmerTy My tank is 90 GAL plus about 20 GAL sump, I am shooting for sterilization. I have had some trouble with Ich in the past and my main motivation for the purchase is to make sure it doesn't happen again. Based on the online owners manual they recommend 79 GPH (not sure where I got the 60 from in my original post) so I am really shooting to get close to the recommended flow.

Thanks for all the input!

 

[Waters]

Oh OK you just dump it right back into the return chamber of your sump? I dint even think of that!

What pump are you using to feed the UV if I can ask?

I am using a Sicce Syncra silent 3.0. Yes, I just dump it right back into the sump. I am running it at about 600gph more for bacterial reasons (had a dino issue which was pretty much eliminated after installing the 40W UV). Because it is on its own pump (this pump has a dial which controls the GPH) I can turn it down if needed.

 

[FarmerTy]

@FarmerTy My tank is 90 GAL plus about 20 GAL sump, I am shooting for sterilization. I have had some trouble with Ich in the past and my main motivation for the purchase is to make sure it doesn't happen again. Based on the online owners manual they recommend 79 GPH (not sure where I got the 60 from in my original post) so I am really shooting to get close to the recommended flow.

Thanks for all the input!

Sorry, I didn't see this until now. I'm usually more active on my local forum in Austin.

At the 79 GPH, you'll be exposing the ich protists to 180,000 mW/cm2. For you to get the exposure level of 336,000 mW/cm2 that literature suggests is the optimum for killing marine ich protists, you'd have to run about 42 GPH through your 25-watt UV sterilizer. It's all about how much weight you want to put on the 336,00 mW/cm2 number as it's an extrapolated number derived from freshwater ich studies.

 

[Katrina71]

Considering UV for our new build. Which one would you recommend for 93g DT, and how do you suggest plumbing it in? Not sure if this is something we want to use all the time or just in the event of...

 

[stacksoner]

You bought a commercial grade UV sterilizer, which comes with performance expectations and delivers certainty as a gatekeeper. This device can ensure that all water entering your DT has been effectively treated with UV, which is why connecting it to your return is crucial.

Running it separately so it empties back into the sump is like TSA screening half of the passengers who pass through their checkpoint.