I have a 4000 gallon pond that's pretty much exposed to the full
Florida sun. In the spring of 2006 I bought a UV device that died,
and then bought the 40watt PondMaster UV and it worked perfectly and
my pond was crystal clear. Literally. It's 4' deep and I could
actually see things sitting on the liner at the bottom.

Then came 2007. First, thing that happened was that the bulb died. I
replaced the bulb, and a few weeks later it stopped working. The
ballast died and PondMaster sent a new one. After a couple weeks the
same thing happened again. They sent another ballast and it worked
fine until a couple weeks ago when I ran over the cord with the lawn
mower. Once I started having all of these problems the algae returned
and even when the UV was working for weeks at a time it did absolutely
nothing to kill the algae. Out of curiosity I called PondMaster to
find out how much a new ballast would cost and they said $95. I
wasn't about to spend $95 on something that wasn't killing my algae
anyway, so decided to call it quits on this light.

I was curious if another manufacturer makes a UV light with the
following characteristics:
1) Submersible
2) Able to sterilize ~4000 gallons of water
3) Manufactured by someone who realizes that ponds are usually further
than 5' from a power outlet. Seriously, why does it seem like lamps
come with longer power cords than pond products?
4) Manufactured by someone who isn't going out of their way to make
the inflow and outflow tubes a size that's compatible with absolutely
nothing (the tiny miserable tubes on the PondMaster really frustrated
me).
5) It actually works
6) Provides some means of informing the owner that it's actually
turned on. My very first UV light device had no feedback whatsoever
and it took me about a week to figure out that it was defective right
out of the box. At least the PondMaster has those nice glowing rings.

After I put about $500 worth of aquamats in a 7000 gallon pond I found I no
longer needed my UV and have had it off for about 4 years now. I still run
a sand filter and a series of upflow gravel filters but was amzed at how
well the aquamats worked.
Dan
"scs0" wrote in message
ups.com...
I have a 4000 gallon pond that's pretty much exposed to the full
Florida sun. In the spring of 2006 I bought a UV device that died,
and then bought the 40watt PondMaster UV and it worked perfectly and
my pond was crystal clear. Literally. It's 4' deep and I could
actually see things sitting on the liner at the bottom.

Then came 2007. First, thing that happened was that the bulb died. I
replaced the bulb, and a few weeks later it stopped working. The
ballast died and PondMaster sent a new one. After a couple weeks the
same thing happened again. They sent another ballast and it worked
fine until a couple weeks ago when I ran over the cord with the lawn
mower. Once I started having all of these problems the algae returned
and even when the UV was working for weeks at a time it did absolutely
nothing to kill the algae. Out of curiosity I called PondMaster to
find out how much a new ballast would cost and they said $95. I
wasn't about to spend $95 on something that wasn't killing my algae
anyway, so decided to call it quits on this light.

I was curious if another manufacturer makes a UV light with the
following characteristics:
1) Submersible
2) Able to sterilize ~4000 gallons of water
3) Manufactured by someone who realizes that ponds are usually further
than 5' from a power outlet. Seriously, why does it seem like lamps
come with longer power cords than pond products?
4) Manufactured by someone who isn't going out of their way to make
the inflow and outflow tubes a size that's compatible with absolutely
nothing (the tiny miserable tubes on the PondMaster really frustrated
me).
5) It actually works
6) Provides some means of informing the owner that it's actually
turned on. My very first UV light device had no feedback whatsoever
and it took me about a week to figure out that it was defective right
out of the box. At least the PondMaster has those nice glowing rings.