Water treatment tablets?

[slbirdnerd]

I want to carry a few water treatment tablets as a back up to my Sawyer Squeeze. I ordered some Katadyn Micropur, which say to treat for 4 hours, but it looks like it hits giardia in 30 mins but not cryptosporidium. If you use tablets, what do you use and if it's an emergency backup, do you work about cryptosporidium? (I don't even know what that is yet...) Thanks!

[bigcranky]

I use tabs as my primary water treatment on section hikes. They are easy and fast, though not cheap. I treat for 30 minutes minimum and don't worry about crypto.

[CalebJ]

Have you considered Aqua Mira as a backup (or primary) instead of the tablets?

[Starchild]

I carry a few iodine tabs as a steripen backup. Never needed to use them. The wait time would mean carrying a lot of water weight as opposed as the instant steripen but it is a secure plan.

[Snowleopard]

According to katadyn's website, micropur kills cysts (giardia, crypto):
30 minutes treatment for clean water at 20C;
4 hours treatment for dirty water at 4C. http://www.katadyn.com/usen/technica...ropur-support/
Micropur_Chart_5dd125d94d.jpg
They don't give the treatment time for cold clear water, but you can find that if you google hard enough.

micropur is the same chemical as aqua mira, but I think gives a higher concentration of chlorine dioxide than aqua mira.

Any filter will filter out cysts, so a reasonable option is filter then treat with chlorine dioxide. The bacteria and virus are killed quickly by the ClO2 and the nasties that take longer to kill are filtered out. No practical filter will filter out virus so if norovirus in water is a problem you need to use some chemical after the filter.

I'll use my steripen with some micropur tablets as backup.

[Odd Man Out]

I originally considered taking a small amount of chemical treatment as a backup for my filter, but then decided that boiling with my stove or campfire would be an adequate solution since it would only be necessary to get me to the next town.