UV Water Filter in a Nutrient Reservoir = Chelating?

I had a Blumat system that I gave up on because I couldn't get rid of an aqueous white mold (in chemical nute solution). It became resistant to chlorine and last summer was hot so I went to hempies but watering turned into a real job.

So I'd really like my Blumats back. I think I'm giving myself an aquarium chiller for Xmas and started thinking about adding an inline UV water filter. Very few people seem to use the UV aquarium filters, maybe this is why:

"In Hydroponic Food Production, by Howard Resh the affect of UV sterilizers on hydroponic nutrients are noted as follows:

"Myohyddin (1985) found that boron and manganese contents in a nutrient solution were reduced by more than 20 percent over a period of 24 hours of sterilization. The most significant effect was on iron, which was precipitated as hydrous ferric oxide. Nearly 100 percent of the iron was affected. The iron precipitate coated lines and the quartz sleeve of the sterilizer, thereby reducing UV transmission."

He then goes on to say that perhaps another form of iron chelate could be used. I think they were working with the iron chelate "Sequestrene" at 10.5% iron.

Mycoblue, Aug 28, 2008"

Some under current people seem to use UV over at the farmer so I was wondering why it is not more popular.

sanjuan said:

so I was wondering why it is not more popular.

Click to expand...

Off the top of my head:
1) The UV light will affect the nutrients
2) The unit can heat up the water
3) It requires electricity
4) It requires bulb changes
5) It can leak

Yeah, I was not looking forward to more complexity. There are some small submersible units but they often leak according to reviews.

I expect a quality chiller will be enough. I can get this thing locally, should be plenty good for my 20 gallon res:
https://www.tecous.com/chillers/tk-150/

So I use blumats also and have battled pythium in my roots and various funk in my rez which clog up the blumats. I started using bleach, took some messing around the sweet spot that killed the pythium but didn't hurt the plants. I settled on around 1.5ml per 5gallons. Using bleach, caused some other issues though which I traced back to the chlorine rusting out the Iron, so I supplement more iron. Seems to be working, not sure if that helps or not.