Anybody use ozone in their reef setup ?

[kvosstra]

In my mind, clear water = greater ability for light penetration, which allows one to use less light to get similar PAR if you were using a higher W bulb with less clear water. ...So yes, I think its a good thing - especially for large tanks! Why spend the money on high quality Low FE glass or acrylic when the water is not crystal clear as well.

-Kyle

 

[yardartist]

PS, ozone is really bad for you. Don't breath it. If you can smell it, you are over exposing yourself.

Just wanted to reiterate how important this is. If you can smell it, that's bad.

And a bit further: You can rapidly desensitize yourself to the smell of ozone. ie, the more exposure you have, the harder it is to smell it. Eventually, enough damage is done and it gets hard to smell it ...and you can see how downhill-bad this can get.

The same principle in the good stuff, bacon sandwiches, one has to keep putting more and more on to actually smell it over the long run.

 

[Gomer]

In my mind, clear water = greater ability for light penetration, which allows one to use less light to get similar PAR if you were using a higher W bulb with less clear water. ...So yes, I think its a good thing - especially for large tanks! Why spend the money on high quality Low FE glass or acrylic when the water is not crystal clear as well.

-Kyle

But that is only one side of the coin. even ignoring ozone itself, one has to consider the byproducts of ozonation. *geek alert* When you go through ozonation, you can generate all sorts of all sorts of intermediates including organo peroxides, ketones, aldehydes, alcohols on top of reactive intermediates. The quantity and identity of these things might be totally benign...but they might not be. I'm not aware of anyone doing a study of the products of ozonolysis of marine organics in the reef environment, and their export channels.

 

[Matt_Wandell]

In my mind, clear water = greater ability for light penetration, which allows one to use less light to get similar PAR if you were using a higher W bulb with less clear water. ...So yes, I think its a good thing - especially for large tanks! Why spend the money on high quality Low FE glass or acrylic when the water is not crystal clear as well.

-Kyle

But that is only one side of the coin. even ignoring ozone itself, one has to consider the byproducts of ozonation. *geek alert* When you go through ozonation, you can generate all sorts of all sorts of intermediates including organo peroxides, ketones, aldehydes, alcohols on top of reactive intermediates. The quantity and identity of these things might be totally benign...but they might not be. I'm not aware of anyone doing a study of the products of ozonolysis of marine organics in the reef environment, and their export channels.

That is a really interesting point Tony!

Here I thought *geek alert* meant you were going to talk about bromide/bromate/etc...

 

[Gomer]

lol. I'm not that familiar with bromine chemistry (but now I'm curious :-D). I did my dissertation on ozone and photooxidation reactions of organic stuff, so this topic is a wee bit interesting for me :-D I never did work in aqueous solutions so I am extrapolating a little bit (but not not by much). Ozone is as scary as it is awesome.

 

[Matt_Wandell]

lol. I'm not that familiar with bromine chemistry (but now I'm curious :-D). I did my dissertation on ozone and photooxidation reactions of organic stuff, so this topic is a wee bit interesting for me :-D I never did work in aqueous solutions so I am extrapolating a little bit (but not not by much). Ozone is as scary as it is awesome.

Hi Tony, from what I remember (until somebody tells me I'm wrong), the ozone can react with the halogens when it's dosed too high to form oxidants. Most of these react with stuff quickly but bromate (and maybe some other Br species?) persist. When people talk about total residual oxidants in seawater this is what they mean. It's TRO that causes damage to living organisms, not ORP, and the two are not a function of each other. There is a test to determine TRO, and this is what we use (along with constant ORP monitoring) to ensure our ozone dose rate is never going too high. This should be included in the .ppt I linked above.