Calling All Ozone Users

[SkiFletch]

Now that vacation and business are over, I've decided to take the ozone plunge and am looking for some advice here on setting mine up. I know a couple of you use them so I'm looking for advice. My main concern is how much Ozone to add as ODing the tank is not a good thing. Most of you know my system but I'll re-hash the important pieces here. I've got a 45g tank with about 15g worth of water in my sump, so a grand total of 60g worth of water. The tank is stocked probably somewhat heavy on fish with 2 ocellaris clowns, 2 fairy wrasses, a psuedochroms springeri, and a bar goby. The tank is heavily stocked with corals as well, mostly LPS, softies, and one derasa clam. Feeding is the equivalent of 2 cubes of frozen per day and a little dash of flake/pellet from an auto feeder. The skimmer in question is a modified Euroreef pretty sure the model is RC-2.

I'm really just looking for dosing advice using the above. I understand how ozone works, how to setup the ozonizer itself (red sea 50mg/hr) and all that, I just dont want to push things too far and risk harming my tank or at worst nuking it. I was thinking about starting on its lowest setting of 2mg/hr and slowly increasing to something that fits with the experience you guys have with them. Lemme know what you think about that.

 

[Ter]

haha, well thats the type of question we would ask you

 

[Pheonix]

Ski ive just got one of these units myself, i think ull remember my post from a while back asking about them.

To be totally honest i couldnt tell you the exact mg.hr that i am running, i go by the redox/orp metre! ur a smart chappie i take it you have one of these aswell?
The natural redox of the sea is 350-400mv (millivolts) alot of reccomendations i got from other reefers was to go by the look of the inhabbitants in your tank to judge how its affecting things, and oddly enough it works fish seem brighter, corals shimmer, its really adjusting the redox level to your tank, as not all will be exaclty the same. mine is currently at 350mv and i think that looks great so im not going to go any higher unless i see and problems in the tank, as long as you dont exceed 500mv you should be fine, this level will strip skin from fish and corals so beware!
start of low and work your way up!

not an exact answer but hope it helps a little

oooo 1 other thing i just remembered, careful when u start using it, systems that use ozone tend to have higher nitrate levels so make sure your filtration can cope with the extra dont want any nasty spikes!

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks for the response Phoenix. Which ozonizer unit do you run?

As to the redox probes, I do NOT trust them or digital pH probes. Both use similar technology that in my experience at my job has proven to fail more often than not. In many instances, these probes drift DRASTICALLY if not calibrated constantly, and I do enough calibration at work, not looking to do that at home . As far as nitrates go, thanks for the heads up. It would be a welcome change to see any nitrate in my system. Havent seen a drop since about april last year

 

[Pheonix]

ski this is the one i have, i was dubious about the price tag when i bought it, ie really cheap, all others i see here in the uk are £150 upwards but it does exactly what it says on the tin, and i have had no problems with it so far, i have got the same companies redox meter aswell but seems like your not going that way so i wont plug it lol

Ozone Generator

it even has the pump built in so you dont have to purchase one separatly

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks for that, looks like you've got a 30mg unit on your big tank? How much/often do you run it?

 

[Pheonix]

this will sound a bit naughty but, in answer too your question, i dont know, i have an automatic system, i set the mv level i want in the water and then the control box turns on and off the ozone generator when needed lazy geeky techknowledgy, it hasnt used that much of the co2 yet so i can only asume its not on that much or it would be going down alot quicker, i am planning to measure the redox manually once a month and if its out from the probe re calibrate it accordingly.

 

[SkiFletch]

mega super lazy huh . Well at least that lets me know to probably not exceed 30mg/hr

 

[Pheonix]

i was quite scared of o'ding the tank if i did it manually so i thought id spend the money on the controller and have a bit of piece of mind, as long as i still check manually once in a while!