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A UV, or ultraviolet filter, will make your garden pond water crystal clearAn ultraviolet light is your best option for killing the algae that turns pond water a pea green color. That is all a uv light does, but it does that job extremely well and with 100% reliability. Every fish pond should be equipped with a uv clarifier. Ultraviolet light occurs all the time in nature -- it's the reason that people get sunburned while on the beach. But this wavelength of light is also deadly to algae, and is a great asset to the pond keeper who's striving for clear water in his or her pond. When shopping for a uv light for your pond, look for 40 degrees efficiency, which is the highest rating for this type of light. At 20 degrees, the light is only operating at 50% efficiency. Ultraviolet systems are known by several names, including uv filters for ponds, uv water purifiers, or uv pond lights. This is how a uv light works in a garden fish pondThe water from your pond is pumped through a quartz tube. Unlike regular glass, which filters out uv light, quartz allows the ultraviolet wavelength to pass through to the water. The quartz also keeps the pond water from coming into direct contact with the uv light source, which is a small version of a fluorescent-type light bulb. This is important because, as stated above, uv light intensity is optimum at 40 degrees centigrade. If water came into direct contact with the lamp, its temperature would be reduced, along with its efficiency. Now there are inexpensive lamps that don't have this quartz barrier fitted to them. But stay away from these units. You can assume that they'll run at 50% efficiency only. Now, as the pond water travels through the quartz tube, uv light rays penetrate the water via direct incidence or from reflection off of metal surfaces. As algae travels through the water, their cell walls are damaged by the uv light, which causes the green algae cells to clump together and thus become larger than four microns in diameter. At this size, they can be filtered out by the pond system's biofilter. Keep in mind that an ultraviolet light doesn't harm anything else in your pond environment. If the unit is designed to match your fish pond application, you can be confident that it will successfully remove the green from your pond water. See this article for more on this topic. |
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