RDWC - Cleaning water - UV or Ozone ???

Hi All

I have a 200l, 6 pot RDWC and wondered what would be best to clean/sterilise the water before i add nutes/plants.

Is it better to pass it through a UV filter for 12 hours or can i just an Ozone generator with airstone and drop it in each tub for 30 mins each (excess ozone would also sterilize room)

Cheers

why? i have used straight tap water for years with no problems.

^^^^^^^^^^^maybe he has well water, like me.^^^^^^^^^

or maybe he has the jolly green giant pissing in a hole in his back yard. lots of maybes when you dont know.

takeiteazy said:

Hi All

I have a 200l, 6 pot RDWC and wondered what would be best to clean/sterilise the water before i add nutes/plants.

Is it better to pass it through a UV filter for 12 hours or can i just an Ozone generator with airstone and drop it in each tub for 30 mins each (excess ozone would also sterilize room)

Cheers

Click to expand...

Don't do this.

And Ozone causes cancer. I would even recommend it if you were doing something that would actually benefit from it, like growing mushrooms.

If you want to worry about something, worry about water temperature - that will kill your plants quicker than pissing in the res.

ozone does not cause cancer. i have used an ozone generator for years in home and business. car rental companies, hotels and cleaning companies use them all the time, but for removing odors, not sterilizing.

takeiteasy;
I would recommend nuken your water, not your nutes. Iron, Zinc and Manganese will drop out of your soup if run through a UV light. Some of the UV light do put out ozone. The water just has to pass through the light at a slow rate to be effective. The UV I run will handle three times more the volume them I'm running through it and has been working just fine without any problems.
Hope this is of some help to ya.
SOD.

superstoner1 said:

ozone does not cause cancer. i have used an ozone generator for years in home and business. car rental companies, hotels and cleaning companies use them all the time, but for removing odors, not sterilizing.

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Look up the MSDS - it's not some bullshit theory like "PVC causes cancer", from wiki: "Exposure to ozone and the pollutants that produce it is linked to premature death, asthma, bronchitis, heart attack, and other cardiopulmonary problems"

Why do you think it 'sterilizes' shit? I believe it oxidizes most things, like bleach, but a gas.

UV isn't particularly safe either, but you can avoid looking at it - unless you can avoid breathing, I wouldn't use ozone.

And all of it's pointless, your not going to get the water sterile. Keep it at 65-70 and you'll be good, go above 75 and you'll be fucked - super simple really.

tibberous said:

Keep it at 65-70 and you'll be good, go above 75 and you'll be fucked - super simple really.

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I've had repeated problems with water temps at 67-68, so if cool temps will do it, they need to be even lower than that.

superstoner1 said:

why? i have used straight tap water for years with no problems.

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You have never had the Pythium luckily.....

sonofdust said:

takeiteasy;
I would recommend nuken your water, not your nutes. Iron, Zinc and Manganese will drop out of your soup if run through a UV light. Some of the UV light do put out ozone. The water just has to pass through the light at a slow rate to be effective. The UV I run will handle three times more the volume them I'm running through it and has been working just fine without any problems.
Hope this is of some help to ya.
SOD.

Click to expand...

I would never run the UV with nutes, this is only to 'clean' the water before i add them start a grow as i am aware of above.

The reason i asked is that i currently have an Ozone generator and hoped that would suffice.

I also have a chiller and plenty of DO oxygen/flooming via the res bucket, once you have had pythium you WILL take every precaution.

Cheers.

Old thread... but curious whatever happened to ozone discussion?

I've got a terrible case of pythium and happen to have a ozone generator. It is a small-ish unit @ 6gms per day output, designed for cleaning swimming pool water. Hooked it up to my res verturi and am waiting to see results.

I can't figure out the dosage though. I ran for 30 mins, in unattended mode (get out of the room!). Do you suppose this will saturate the water with o3 and fungus will be gone?

Also, I read varying opinions on what this does to res nutrients. Frankly, I just want the damn pythium gone.. but would be nice if I could run this a few times per week and sterilize the res.

Any thoughts... anyone?

Not sure about ozone but being a newb Ive wondered why I have never had to deal with res issues. I've ran appr. 12 runs so far and like I said i have had no issues. My grow is far from what would be considered a lab like area, I have light leaks into the res(small ones) and temps of res fluctuate from 65-75. My water comes from a well at 200 ppm's, but it does have a whole house UV light. Could it be the UV light is saving my ass? Anyone?

What i've done and this might sound frickin crazy and it's a lot of work, but, I run dwc, without reservoir. If 1, 5 gal bucket gets root rot, I run the roots under the faucet that has my water softener hooked to it. I then go reset my nutes using my plain old well water reseal the bucket add more rocks if needed.

The salt/softened water seems to kill/reduce the root rot, however, I am always on the look out for this and take care of it immediately at first notice.

Sometimes I do not put enough rocks in the net pots and the water is exposed to light, which then promotes the growth of root rot. Because my buckets are all separate, the root rot is isolated to only that one bucket. More work yes, but, less heart ache than having your entire system borked.