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Ozone or not to Ozone ?

Does anyone recommend using an ozonator? Also what is the rule of thumb gallon to mg?
Also can you over ozone the water?
 

reefsandrotts

NJRC Member
If I remember I think it is 5mg. Ozone to 10 gallons of water.
Yes you can overdose ozone and have a total non-recovering meltdown.
Be sure to run ozone with a ORP meter and controller, Dr.Smith sells these units from red-sea you will also need an air drier and ozone safe tubing.
Hope this helps.
 

mikem

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Does it matter if you get a bigger unit?
The only things needed for set up are? Ozone generator, Orp meter, orp controller, and extra tubing? Do I need pumps or anything? Does it hafta run thru a skimmer? What are my other options? Thanks for you're help.
Mike
 

JohnS_323

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Mike, I'm still wrestling through this whole process right now. I'm using an Enaly 300mg unit with an air dryer on about 400 gallons and it doesn't seem to be enough. I tried making my own reactor but that was a failed experiment so I've decided to go through the skimmer. That seems to be working OK, but as I said, I can't get my ORP up where I'd like it (I'm hovering around 300 and I'd like to be up around 375).

When I first tied into the skimmer I was using the John Guest Fitting that came with it. Using that I smelled ozone a lot. About a month after I started it up the JG fitting cracked apart so I swithched to an ozone safe hose barb. With that I don't smell any ozone at all.

You could probably get an oversized unit but I'd suggest tying it into some sort of controller (ACII or something like that). I don't know anything about the Red Sea units. I think they may have some type of controller built in. The whole key is to bring the ORP up slowly so everything gets used to it slowly.

I have to say, this is one part of the hobby that I have a lot of trouble getting information on. Hopefully other people with more experience will chime in . . . .
 

mikem

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I think I'll stick to building houses and pay someone to set me up. Every time I read about it, I go 1 step backwards. I liked reefing 30 years ago better where there wasn't all this fancy equiptment. I bought a calc. reactor and all accer. about 4 months ago, and their still sitting here in the boxes. I have the ACJR. My PH doesn't rise above 8.2. How would it turn on my react. if calc. is slightly low? And if I turn it on manually, would it lower my PH? Give me the most complex blue prints in the world and I would have no problem building a house from it.
 

Brian

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
This is one thing I have no desire to dive to into.. It makes me waaay to nervous that you can wipe out your whole system if you do it wrong. I'm not even sure I see the benefit of Ozone... Is it just water clarity? Then I would also be afraid of what the ozone does to the rest of your equipment... Doesn't it break down plastic and rubber?

I don't know.. You guys are brave!
 

mikem

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I just love the clarity in Andy's and Disney's tank and who ever else's that use it. I'm afraid, so thats why I'm trying to learn everything before I make the plunge.
 

reefsandrotts

NJRC Member
I ran ozone years ago and learned that in my opinoin get a bigger skimmer to remove more freefloating proteins and run more chemical filtration like carbon this gave me pretty much the same benefit as the ozone without pumping toxins into my familys lungs.Keep in mind free floating ozone is just as bad as carbon monoxide.
 

JohnS_323

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Wow! Thanks for the info Jeff. That's some nice "light" reading. I had to take a break when my eye started twitching! I'll have to take my time and sort through it all at home.
 
A quick tip on reading Randy's articles. He tends to write a laymans introduction in the first paragraph then a quick overview and then he gets into the real technical stuff for a few paragraphs (that's when I usually take a quick nap) and then comes out of it at the end with layman's summary.

So I usually print out the articles and keep them in a notebook to refer to later on. That way I don't have to fully absorb the whole article all at once.
 
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