Calling ALL Ozone users!

[REMoses]

Hi all. This is my first post on ReefCentral, but I have been a lurker here for about a year. The wisdom and knowledge that I have received from this board cannot be measured. I would like to thank all of the moderators, mentors and members for making this one of the best aquarium message boards on the net!

Now on to my question :)

I know Ozone use is a much debated topic and is thought by many to have no place in our reef tanks. I understand the reasons behind this and do not wish to rehash a thoroughly discussed topic.

What I would like to know is what are the major differences seen when one introduces a Ozone generator to the tank? Will it diminish/eradicate Cyanobacteria and other forms of "pest" algaes?

BTW, if anyone has a website that shows an Ozonizer in their setup, please post it. I would like to see pictures of it in a practical setup.

Thanks and all the best.
Richard.

[Doug]

Hi Richard and [welcome]

Doug

[REMoses]

^bump^

[JohnL]

Hi Richard,

I used ozone for about a year. I stopped using it last November and my tank has never looked better. Ozone is not a silver bullet and IMO does more harm than good in a reef tank. My $.02 ;)

[jim]

I use ozone on a 500 gal FO tank,

I turned it off for 8 weeks to medicate the tank and couldn't believe how yellow the water got. When I turned it back on, the water turned crystal clear in 24 hours.

It will help control paracites and algae growth. However, I have been battling a minor slime algae problem for a while and while it helps control it, it does not eliminate it.

Jim

[O'Man]

I used ozone for a couple of years. All I got from it were high redox readings, a fair looking tank and a lot of time wasted on equipment that I was eventually glad to get rid of.

IMO a good skimmer, carbon when needed and a DSB give good results without the need to test for residual ozone. Additional ozone is not exactly something you want in your home. Besides, when I got rid of the ozone, I no longer needed the canary:D

[FMarini]

Richard:
I use Ozone in my 180 Fo. I have to say that i'm totally sold on it for Fo tanks, but I do so w/ hestiation. Its a double edged sword that must be used w/ respect.
I have an ozotech 300mg unit and connect it directly into my beckett head(bullet2 skimmer) the outflows from this unit are passed over bags of GAC(carbon). I also use a monitor to controls its activity(maintains a higher ORP level). Lastly the outflow from the skimmer is in the far end of the sump so the water and any residual ozone has to pass along way before it gets back into the tank.
W/ that said it helps in a few ways. Since all my fish are long term captives i have not had outbreaks of disease in yrs(this also goes to my husbandry). The water is always crystal clear(which was reported earlier-O3 really removes yellowing), and since I process all of my tank thru the skimmer 100% of my tank water is disinfected by the o3. Incase anyone believes in this increased bacteria= problems theory.
The downside....
Ozone is toxic to your lungs and fish gill tissue-so you really have to ensure the outflows are carbons filtered.
Unless you have all your tank water going thru the o3 unit or have all the algae/parasites in your tank going thru it, it does little to stop outbreaks of algae(cynao or other), or little to control disease already present in the tank.
So in your case i would consider aganst it, but it does have an application
my opinion
frank

[KASESQ]

Ozone will, over time, make all plastic in your system
become brittle , crack, and break.

[Jack Toering]

I've used ozone for many years the past on my reef tanks. I'm just setting up again after a 5-year break from the hobby. Ozone will most certainly promote a healthy crystal clear tank, especially if your reef has any fish. You would have a tough time finding a public aquarium that doesn't use it.

I only buy ozone safe skimmers. (TurboFlotor no matter what they say is, Red Sea Berlin, lots of others.) You can use standard airline into an ozonizer but the output side MUST be ozone resistant tubing. Anything not ozone resistant between the ozonizer output and the water will turn rock hard in a short period of time. Some plastics even look like they've melted. A little GAC in the top of the skimmer will insure that no ozone gas corrodes anything inside of your stand. You don't have to replace it until it disappears. Ozone lives longer in air, especially dry pure air.

Depending on which principle the ozonizer generates, it may say it needs a dryer. Ignore that. It ALWAYS needs a dryer. Moisture and anything carried with it will diminish the amount of ozone available to the water that you want to treat. AWAYS use a dryer. Get one that you can see the crystals turn from blue to pink and that you can throw in the oven and turn them back to blue.(rechargeable) Also run the input line to the dryer somewhere dry instead of inside the stand with your sump. It will go quite awhile before you need to put them in the oven again depending on the size dryer. Mine is about 4" dia. X 18" tall.

O3, because of its valence, has a high propensity to oxidize many materials. However O3 will combine with which ever matter is EASIEST to combine with. Carbon based anything goes REAL fast, which can be a good thing. But like the skimmer, it can remove good guy elements as well. Speaking of which, your skimmer will be less busy with ozone. Oxygen levels will be higher with ozone but not directly because of the ozone. This is simply a result of the removal of the impurities that retard oxygen exchange. A skimmer also does this to a lesser level.

From at disease standpoint, UV never worked for me in salt water. With ozone I got to not care anymore if a fish had something. He wouldn't have it long after he moved into my reef. UV is like Raid. The dead bodies come out the other end. Ozone is like a bug light. Smoke comes out the other end and probably the food he and his buddies needed to survive went up with it.

Any drawbacks? Ozone has a very short life span, especially in impure water. It would actually be quite a trick to get it from your sump to your tank. That's not to say that high levels of ozone usage couldn't cause a problem, but it won't be the ozone that causes the problem but rather some of the oxides.

Residual Ozone test kits don't test for residual ozone. They test for certain specific harmful oxides. Actually a long ways down the chain of easiest possible combinations for oxidation is the creation of hypochlorite and hypobromite from their obvious sources in seawater. However that is precisely the reason for the ORP monitors/controllers. They simply make sure that the redox potential, e.g. purity of the water, does not get so high that this happens. If it does, the test kit can measure these oxides. If you ever do get them, the only way out is water changes.

An ozonizer is capable of getting your water to the redox potential of an offshore reef. Here is something that will make me very unpopular with the LFS. If you do ozone, go small. To do my 55 gallon reef and later a 110 gallon reef I used a More-Zon 30 mg unit that put out about 60 mg that I bought for $65 on the internet. (You can also pay more for a 110 mg that puts out 25 mg, but that's another story.) Also I have to say the thing outlasted the $200 high output ones several times over. Set your Orp controller for 375-400 mv and call it good. (I paid $119 for my controller. Probes sometimes last a long time and sometimes only a year. 2 to 2 1/2 years is more the average.) If I added a sick fish I would sometimes kick it up to 400 to 420 to speed their recovery, and when I remembered I would crank it back down. The little ozonizer will run a lot using this method, but you are never in danger of an excessive local or global redox potential to where harmful oxides will be created. LFS and some guys would borrow an orp monitor to determine how many hours a day to have their ozonizers run instead of using a controller. NONE of them ever had a problem.

But aren't I afraid of these oxides accumulating over the long term? Well this isn't something that is going to make me popular. The 55 reef that I was talking about had been set up for 9 years with NO water change during the entire period. I have a Residual Ozone Test kit. What a waste. It never detected anything. Did I add supplements to that tank with 9 years on the same water? On the 55, yes. I did change the water after that because I had to move it.

How did it do? It also had most of the original fish in it. I did lose a Flame Angel because he was a digger and finally one day a rock settled on his head. I also learned that there was a connection between the snapping noise at night and disappearance of fish and dead clams. Also I didn't know back then that you couldn’t do worse than a nutrient poor reef for Mandarin fish. Beyond that occasionally a fish lasted a few days after purchase and I only have theories for them. Corals did well. But all in all, I had no problem keeping things alive. Later I moved everything to a 110 high with a Jaubert base.

Will I use ozone this time around? I'm not sure yet. I think ozone can very reliably approximate water conditions of the nutrient poor parts of the reef if that is what you want to approximate. On the other hand from past experience it seems that the more natural I made things the better they've worked and the less effort they've required. My Jaubert base was a GREAT natural calcium reactor and water parameter maintainer. This time I'm thinking about mud and caulerpa or similar method. My thought is to export nutrients this way and perhaps keep the good guys. I'm not sure that I will use Magic Mud, but it makes sense to me to persue methods more logical and natural than to buy or raise tiny critters, not to mention naturally occuring spores from desirable species, and then have the skimmer dump them in a cup or an ozonizer vaporize them. We'll see how the experiment goes. Even if it doesn't pan out, I can always return to conventional strategies.

My guess is that you know someone who is talking positively about ozone. I'm also guessing that someone owns a LFS. I don't think that you should necessarily draw the connection that the someone who is telling is simply out to make a buck. If I had a LFS I would be using ozone for look of my tanks, protecting the health of livestock stressed from transportation, curing sick fish, and to be able to supply customers with healthy disease free livestock. Furthermore I might even encourage customers to have it for the beautiful crystal clear water look and overall reef health. The only reason that I personally might not employ it because I want to test a less proven natural method to determine if it's benefits outweigh more conventional methods. Neither you nor I would likely be confortable recommending less proven methods to customers unless we were comfortable with them.

Jack

[KASESQ]

Years ago I followed Spotte's schematic for an ozone system
and keeping the dehydrating column dehydrated was a weekly
task. The only thing I could have done was to add an air
chiller ahead of the dehydrating column, per Spotte's recommendations. I have been noticing recently that spa
manufacturers are touting ozone generators as a way of
avoiding chlorine use.

[JohnL]

Yes, very nice post, Jack.

Richard, here is some more info for you.

http://www.reefcentral.com/library/redox.htm

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/marphysf.htm

http://acmepet.petsmart.com/fish/mfira/13.html

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