uvc steriliser?

[martink]

im using rainwater that hits my roof and thought i may start using a cheapish uv sterilser to clean water of bacteria. any thoughts? its almost impossible to ascertain if they are effective through internet reviews. what i do at present is to boil the water and let it cool before i put it in the tank, but i can only get it to 80 degrees without faffing around too much with seperate pots. thought someone might know if either were effective at all at preventing bacteria in the tank.

 

[yukondog]

Is this a shingle roof or metal? Don't know anything about the uvc steriliser, but if coming off a shingle roof I would not use it, I use rain water but it is off a metal roof.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

im using rainwater that hits my roof and thought i may start using a cheapish uv sterilser to clean water of bacteria. any thoughts?

I don't think it is necessary. I've used rain-water since the 1970s without any issues.

I use a Daphnia bioassay to assess water quality, basically if the water has any Daphnia swimming in it when I draw if from the water butt we are good to go.

If you have very pure rainwater (our picks up some limestone dust and reads between 30 - 100 microS) you may find that Daphnia won't grow in it.

cheers Darrel

 

[Mike Wise]

If you're concerned about the water quality, I would suggest that you wait 15 minutes after it starts raining before collecting the water. This gives enough time for your roof to wash away most contaminants. I would consider this myself, but where I live the average precipitation for the entire year is only 17"/42.5cm and rains rarely last more than a half of an hour.

 

[martink]

If you're concerned about the water quality, I would suggest that you wait 15 minutes after it starts raining before collecting the water. This gives enough time for your roof to wash away most contaminants. I would consider this myself, but where I live the average precipitation for the entire year is only 17"/42.5cm and rains rarely last more than a half of an hour.

yeah i can open the tap for the first 15 minutes on the barrel and let it run out, i might do that. attaching the pipe in the rain sounds like an explanation in the emergency room. ha

 

[martink]

Hi all,

I don't think it is necessary. I've used rain-water since the 1970s without any issues.

I use a Daphnia bioassay to assess water quality, basically if the water has any Daphnia swimming in it when I draw if from the water butt we are good to go.

If you have very pure rainwater (our picks up some limestone dust and reads between 30 - 100 microS) you may find that Daphnia won't grow in it.

cheers Darrel

m no it picks up something from the slate roof i think mine is 35.

 

[martink]

Is this a shingle roof or metal? Don't know anything about the uvc steriliser, but if coming off a shingle roof I would not use it, I use rain water but it is off a metal roof.

its slate not shingle. actually its not slate its a gray concrete kind of made to look like slate.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

from the slate roof i think mine is 35

Fine, it will gain a couple of microS from dissolved CO2 (the H+ and HCO3- ions from the disassociation of H2CO3). I'd guess that the rest will be any ions from dust etc.

It is actually a very small amount of salts dissolved in the rain-water, as an example the conductivity standard calibration solution is 0.746g KCl in one litre to give 1411 microS.

cheers Darrel

 

[MacZ]

Why do we use soft water in the first place? Because our fish are adapted to it.
Why have our fish adapted to it? Not just because it's what they got, but because soft water is poor in bacteria and pathogens and that's why our fish do so extraordinarily well in it. Their spawns are safe from bacteria and fungi and the adult fish are more healthy.

In Discus keeping people use UV sterilizers as a replacement for soft water, as even hard water is cleaned from pathogens that way.

So unless there are parasites and diseases distributed via bird droppings like Mixobolus sp. going round in the native fish populations in your area a mechanical filter is all that's necessary to pretreat rain water. If there are known contaminations from traffic pollution or industrial waste in the area a carbon filter would be advisable.
But I see no need for a UV sterilizer to treat rainwater.

 

[Eddy. E.]

I'm with Mac on this one. If rainwater is normally harvested through the roof and then collected in barrels or drums, you have at most the problem of an organic input of what accumulates on the roof. That can easily be filtered out via activated carbon. UV sterilization is not required.