From: rader@ssec.wisc.edu (Steve Rader)
Subject: Re: [M] Ozone in da Skimmer...
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Space Science and Engineering Center
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 20:21:52 GMT


tse@ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse) writes:
|> 	Well, I started to shot my mouth off about a year ago about this
|> ozone in a skimmer BS and hardly anyone want to listen.  Now I think more
|> and more people are against ozone. 

Hummm, the people I know who use ozone claim ozone keeps their water
cleaner and additionally allow them to keep the redox at above 350mv.  
I don't think their tanks look too much better than reefs w/o ozone, though...
perhaps the hard corals look better and perhaps the soft corals look
worse.  This leads me to think their water may actually have less dissolved
organics.  Note: these folks are *not* using made-for-aquaria ozone generatiors,
they are using swimming pool ozone generators on for about 2-3 days per week.
The redox goes way too high with continious use ( 500mv+ !) causing the
inverts stress out.

|> My theory, ozone oxidize protein, so
|> if you inject ozone into your protein skimmer, the water
|> in your skimmer will have the lowest concentration of protein in your
|> entire system.  Unless you tank is in really really bad shape, your
|> skimmer won't be skimming anything with ozone.

Huh?  If you inject ozone into a skimmer, you'll have the same
concentration of protein, but you'll have smaller oxidized proteins.
Smaller, more oxidized proteins are more hydrophyllic than larger 'ens
and thus more likely to be skimmed out of the system. 

Any comments from the organic-chem types?

|> I have a ozone
|> generator, I used to use it on my Oceanic #4, my Oceanic #4 used to
|> produce 1/4" of gunk every week before the ozone injection, the day
|> I started ozone injection, no foam, none what so ever.  I called Oceanic
|> and they said, that's typical, happen all the time.

No suprise to me.  A shop owner I've known for a decade or so made three 
important points when I raised your objections to ozone.  I think they
are at the source of the misconceptions about ozone and ozone's "bad rap"...

     1) When folks go from air to ozone injections in their skimmers, they
	almost all ways inject much less volume of gasses into the 
	skimmer.  Hence, they get less waste from their skimmers.

     2) The process of oxidation bleaches (brown) proteins so that
	they appear transparent...  Just because the waste from a ozone driven
	skimmer is clear doen't mean there is *less* protein in the waste.  To
	the contrary, the smaller, oxidized proteins are more adpt to cling to
	oxygen and thus more adpt to be expelled from the skimmer.

     3) Ozone generators built for aquaria make ozone by sparking electricty
	across some contacts.  This design will inherently make the ozone
	generator fail within 6 months as the contacts corrode.

These points seem reasonable to me.  But on the other hand, I've been able
to maintain very good water quality (crystal water with < 2ppm nitrate) using
a large skimmer, RO makeup water and an empty wet/dry on my bear-bottom reef.  

I do think ozone skimmers do a somewhat better job than ones driven with air.
The problem I have with ozone, however, is that "somewhat" is not justified
by $100-$250 outlay for some device that will fail in 6 months.

If money was not an issue (dream on), I'd probably have a swimming pool type
ozone generator controlled by a redox probe hung off my forth-programmable
reef-computer.  =;)

That's my $.02,
Steve

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Rader                             rader@ssec.wisc.edu
Sys Admin Geek
Space Sci & Engineering Center          Ain't nothing in the world
University of Wisconsin, Madison        like a green skinned girl
                                        Omnibus, takes all of us
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Newsgroups: rec.aquaria,alt.aquaria