*Note: There are TWO "Koi-Lo's" on this NG*

"DavidM" wrote in message
...
Koi-Lo wrote, On 30/04/2006 15:05:
The useful bacteria are mainly on all pond surfaces and in your filter.
Not many are in free in the water. It's better to turn off the lights
when you add bacteria and give it a chance to settle. Leave the UV
lights off for a least 24 hours. No use adding them and then killing
many of them off as they go through your UV light unit.
========
Depends if you have a UV Sterilizer or just a UV Clarifier. Clarifiers are
the most common type. UV causes the algae to coagulate making it easier to
filter out, it goes between the pump and filter. Very unlikely to kill
bacteria in solution.

I've read in several places to turn your UV light off for (so many hours)
after adding any type of bacterial product. It's so easy to do - why not?

To kill bacteria you require a very powerful UV source. Probably needs to
be installed after the filtration stage for best water transparency.

Sounds like a risky business to me, it takes high doses of UV to mutate
bacteria in the lab. Flowing water past a lamp for fractions of a second
seems pretty pointless. More likely to produce mutant strains than
sterilisation I would think.

You're probably right but not everyone has water going through their UV
filter at a high rate of speed. I don't know if that would matter or not. I
know ours runs through the UV unit at around 250gph in the smaller 800g pond
and you can see a difference in 24 hours. In less than a week it's clear of
visible algae.
--
Koi-Lo....
Frugal ponding since 1995.
Aquariums since 1952.
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
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