pros and cons of ozone?

[abraham]

Hey there,
I've been frantically searching this sight and others for a good way to get rid of a dinoflagellate problem I'm having. The only thing that I've read that has worked everytime someone has mentioned it is ozone. Everything else seems to be a mixed bag of results. I'm tired of messin' with this stuff! I'm tempted to get a onzonizer, but when I went to order one, the dealer told me that it'd kill off my bacteria bed too. I obviously don't want to do that! Anyone got some wisdom for me?

Abraham

 

[npaden]

I ran a poll on this subject a while back.

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t ... ozone+poll

I ended up getting an ozonizer and I am very happy with it. It keeps the water crystal clear.

FWIW, Nathan

 

[taikonaut]

I am sure you can solve your problem without ozone, and even with ozone, you may still have your problem.

IMHO, ozone is not the silver bullet.

 

[Money Pit]

About 2 weeks ago I started dripping kalk to keep my PH at 8.5-8.6 and today I could not find a trace of it. I have been battling this stuff for well over 6 months and tried everything else, I even removed all my sand and about a 100 pounds of live rock (which helped until I put new live sand in). I also used carbon in the sump for about a month, which I removed today.
I almost forgot, I hooked my UV back up 3 or 4 days ago, but I think the kalk drip helped the most. Give it a try for a week and I'm sure you will see results.

 

[npaden]

I also agree with taikonaut, ozone is not the silver bullet. The one thing everyone can agree on is that it is as good or in my opinion better at clarifying the water than carbon is.

FWIW, Nathan

 

[dizzy]

Nathan,
It may be good for water clarity and bad for the fish. Have you ever been to a public aquarium and seen fish with lateral line and hole in the head? Most of the ones I have seen with bad problems were running heavy ozone. Coincidence? Perhaps.
Mitch

 

[npaden]

Mitch, that's absurd.

It is completely amazing how some people are willing to say that running ozone in your tank will cause all these horrible problems.

You can say that it isn't worth the money but it just isn't as dangerous as people pretend. You are actually more likely to suffer from ozone problems if you live in L.A. from the polution than you are if you are running a hobby sized ozonizer on your tank.

There are millions of hot tubs running ozonizers quite a bit stronger than hobby sized with no health issues and that is with the people in there. And that is with the ozonizer running for days with the cover on and then pulling the cover off to a wiff of the fresh after a thunderstorm smell that is ozone. That is another big source of ozone - lightning. Ozone can be raised to elevated levels that would be considered on the border of dangerous by the EPA simply from a large thunderstorm with heavy lightning strikes.

Oh well, just got that off my chest.

Nathan

 

[dizzy]

Nathan,
I didn't say it was definitely positively bad for fish? I said I have seen fish in tanks with ozone that looked terrible. It may not be quite as absurd as you think. I know of one public aquarium that killed all the sharks in a new display because the ozone was set too high. Not dangerous? Tell that to the dead sharks. I tried using it many years ago. Our air is way to humid around here, and baking the beads in the air dryer was such a pain I gave it up. Never looked back since.
Mitch

 

[npaden]

Mitch,
You're right. I should have prefaced that with an appropriate sized hobbiest ozonizer is safe. I would always recommend running ozone on a controller in addition to making sure it was appropriately sized for the tank.
Nathan

 

[dgasmd]

Just like anything, you have to know how to use it and how much to use. You are more likely to kill an entire tank with kalk or just about anything else you dose than ozone. There are some basics about it and that is about it.