Quote:
Originally Posted by BCOrchidGuy
Just out of curiosity, if there was a problem with the carbon scrubber and ozone did make it into the aquarium, wouldn't it burn the fishes gills and probably kill them as well. Ozone is an oxydizer, it breaks down rubber etc, and it will burn mucous membranes.
Doug
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Hobby units are not even close to strong enough to kill much in our tanks. I know people who use them without carbon at all. Even larger parasites running through ozone reactors can often survive. The exposure would have to be VERY long at high levels and ozone just doesn't last long enough in saltwater for this to be a real concern with the small units we use.
For ozone to be effective you need a contact time of at least 45 seconds (not likely with most reactors), much bigger ozonizer than most companies carry and a much bigger industrial air pump that get really expensive. Otherwise all your doing is making the water clear and not much else.
I used ozone for years and would never bother again. It really is a waste of money IMO....unless you can spend thousands to set it up properly and even then, its benefits in a reef aquarium really are not much.
In a North Sea system may years ago studies where done on ozonated seawater vs non-ozonated seawater. There is no doubt from this study that the use of Ozone did cause a decrease in bacteria population density but had no effect what so ever on parasites or other protozoans. They also gave no ozone concentrations in this study. In general there will be or can be a 10 % decrease in bacteria form 300-400 mV. But nothing really happens until you get to 600mV. And it takes 800 mV to cause complete sterilization. And contact times in all of these need to be somewhere between 30 - 60 sec. and we get nowhere near that in most reactors.