From: tse@ra.nrl.navy.mil (Anthony Tse)
Subject: Re: [M] Ozone in da Skimmer...
Organization: Naval Research Lab, Washington, DC
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 22:42:49 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.202152.486@cs.wisc.edu> rader@ssec.wisc.edu (Steve Rader) writes:
>
>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,

	My water & inverts look exactly the same w/ or w/o ozone.  As far as
redox, read the Jan issue of FAMA.  The redox in a real reef ranges from
a little over 100 to around 450mV.  The German guy who has acropora
growing like weed has a redox reading of 165mV.  So I don't buy this
higher redox is better bit.

>|> 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.

	Not the case with an Oceanic skimmer.  You don't pump air into a
Oceanic, air is drown into the ventura valve, so you have the same
volume of air w/ or w/o ozone generator (assuming you clean the reaction
tube of the ozone generator regualarly).

>     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.

	I don't mean the stuff coming out of the skimmer became clear.  I
mean nothing came out of the skimmer.  The collection cup was bone dry.
The head of foam simply disappeared.

>     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.

	Not true at all.  The Sander generator I have has a glass tube
inside a Al tube.  The spark goes from the glass tube to the Al tube.
Yes, you do have to clean the Al tube every other week or so.  That's
why the ozonizer came with a metal brush w/ a long handle.  Beside, even
if the ozonizer failed, the skimmer is still sucking air, so it shouldn't
make thing any worst.

>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.  

	My nitrate level is around .25 ppm w/ or w/o ozone.  My biggest
objection to the ozone bit is that it turn the single most important
piece of reef filtration into a worthless tube.

-Anthony
Newsgroups: rec.aquaria,sci.aquaria