Comments on: Using Ozone in the Home Aquarium

By: pg94

pg94 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:21:39 +0000

Hey guys, I appreciate all the technical appliances you’re all using however, I first applied an ozone machine in a tank that I was keeping threadfin shad that I bought from a fish farm. I had a tank of about 10,000 shad for my trophy fishing pond as a sure fire bait. After day after day of scooping 30-50 dead shad out of the tank, I happened to find an ozone machine that I had acquired from my OCD grandmother and read on the side of my ozone machine that it kills viruses, molds, cysts, bacteria, and chemical contaminants. Well every other fish that was dead and scooped out had weird infections or growths on them and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try, this was in 2004. So I put a diffuser on the end of the tube which expelled the ozone, attached a suction cup to it and put it in the tank. The next day I scooped out 5 dead fish, the day after that, the water was so clear I couldn’t believe it and oh yeah I didn’t have to scoop out any dead shad. The ozone machine has a timer on the side which allows you to control the time on in 15 minute increments. I was running it for 15 minutes every hour. I didn’t have a protein skimmer, or fancy filtration systems, I had one aquarium filter on it and an ozone machine. Since then, I have connected this machine to all my tanks which house freshwater piranhas, stingrays, barracudas, puffers, and arowanas. The ozone was diffused directly into the tank with a stone diffuser; it looks just like an aerator. I have sold arowanas back to pet stores for ridiculous amounts of money because the water I can maintain them in and the food I feed them is of the highest quality. These arowanas start to turn red in color and people in the U.S. go crazy about this because it costs a lot of money to get a red arowana. I have never measured the concentration of ozone in my tanks or killed my fish or plants in the tanks due to ozone exposure. You can spend as much money as you want on your aquariums but I don’t know if it’s necessary.
PG

By: OzoneChua

OzoneChua — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 06:32:00 +0000

I purchased an ozone air generator recently and upon applying into the two fish tanks, the water in the fish tank was clearer and the fish that was suffering from a bacteria infection on the eye recovered after 2 days. The machine I bought had an in-built timer. By the way, the stale smell was also removed.

Now, I am a believer in the Ozone machine.

By: tolga

tolga — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 11:29:59 +0000

Hello Dave, thank you very much for your reply and for sharing all this with us. I wanted to ask you about the carbon reactor as it is clear from your answer that i am going to have use one on my system. How do you monitor the effectiveness of the carbon without the risk of letting ozone seep into the water column? Presumably, if the carbon reactor contains enough activated carbon for the job, then it should work and everything will be alright. But after a while, this carbon may become exhausted which means that certain quantity of ozone may seep back into the system endangering the fish. My point is that by the time one realises that this has occurred, it may already be too late, so how does one know at the outset as to how much carbon is needed for the amount of ozone in question and for how long? From what I have read so far, I have gained the impression that there may not be much room for trial and error in dealing with ozone. But I might be wrong as I have not had any experience with any of this. Does the carbon absorb the ozone and retain it permanently in its structure or does it retain it temporarily until ozone transforms itself into something less damaging such as pure oxygen perhaps? Apologies if this all sounds too anal, but I am really interested in using ozone in the discus tank I am intending to set up very soon and I haven’t used activated carbon before so Im not familiar with its possibilities. Also, I have heard that ozone use in aquariums can sometimes lead to the reduction nitrites. It has even been claimed that nitrites can be eliminated completely from the biological cycle or they do not form at all. If that is the case, could this not lead to a dramatic reduction if not total elimination of nitrates? I’m really not sure about this, but I would have thought that Nitrates being the end product of biological nitrification process, would seize to exist in the absence of any nitrites? That is, if there are no other sources such as tap water which could account for their presence in the system. This latter point is pure speculation, so feel free to ignore it but the point about the carbon is something that is bothering me and I’l be grateful if you could shed some light on this. Cheers. Tolga

By: marinebioblog

marinebioblog — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:27:18 +0000

Tolga, what you are proposing sounds feasable, you can use an inline ozone reactor for your freshwater aquarium. I would definately reccomend that you somehow incorporate a carbon filter inline after the ozone reactor. You do not want free ozone in your display, it can be very damaging to animals in your tank. Running ozone in a closed system is much more risky, than running it in a skimmer in an open sump, which gives any risidual ozone a chance to vent off, before being returned to the aquarium.

By: Tolga

Tolga — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:34:17 +0000

Sorry, i messed it up… In my last point I was trying to ask about not using activated carbon on the water entering back into the tank
as this would need to be regularly replaced which I could do without unless I have to. I hope this is not too longwinded. thanks.
Tolga

By: Tolga

Tolga — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:22:25 +0000

Hello Dave
This article is extremely helpful. Thank you. I am in the process of planning a wild heckel discus biotope aquarium. It is going to be approximately 700 litres. I don’t have a sump. I have two large eheim canisters one of which is a wet and dry type. I will drill the bottom of the tank and run my canister filters in a closed loop type system. I had initially thought of adding ansurface skimmer fed canister with the chemical media known as Purigen for the dissolved organics plus a uv steriliser unit for getting rid of the unwanted nasties. I also thought of using an oxidator for achieving higher ORP values. Oxidator was relatively popular in the eighties. It works by converting liquid hidrogen peroxide into a steady steam of pure oxygen. Lately, however, I have been increasingly veering towards the idea of using ozone instead. Reading your article made me more enthusiastic about the idea. Can I use ozone in a closed loop freshwater system without a sump? I thought of getting a hobby type ozonizer and using it in conjunction with a specially manufactured fresh water ozone reactor fed by prefiltered water from the surface skimmer. Does this all sound feasible to you? Could I get away with checking the ORP of the tank from time to time as opposed
To monitoring it constantly? And lastly,
would I be taking any significant risks
If I was to allow the water that comes out of the ozone reactor chamber go straight back into the tank whithout letting it past through an additional canister cantaining activated carbon? Would the

By: need an opinion - Manhattan Reefs

need an opinion - Manhattan Reefs — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:30:48 +0000

[...] Ozone Accident (in a reef tank) Ozone and the Reef Aquarium, Part 1: Chemistry and Biochemistry Using Ozone in the Home Aquarium Like I said above, there are countless articles online with just a little research to help you to [...]

By: Raul

Raul — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:01:11 +0000

Great article, my question is similar to Anna´s one, I am planning a freshwater closed system (mostly for tetras) for about 3 tanks, in total the system will be around 200 gallons, these 3 tanks with sump, biotowers and the rest, I was thinking in add UV lamp at the end but UV radiation is not enough to control some possible diseases like White Spot.
I wonder if Ozone can also destoy that kind of possible parasites too?
I was thinking in the last part of the sump put the Ozone (using small ozone reactor) and after the time of contact (I would apreciate you tell me how long this time need to be) pass the water to other container and before pump it back to the system use a lot of air bubbles to remove any remaining O3.
For this size of system, what size and kind of O3 reactor would you recomend and what is the dosage?

Waiting your comments

Raul

By: marinebioblog

marinebioblog — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:54:57 +0000

Anna,
The best option for your situation is to use an in-sump type protein skimmer as an ozone reaction chamber. Connect the Output of the Ozone generator to the air intake of the skimmer with ozone safe tubing, and let it draw the ozone through the system. I would not recomend using an air bubbler, that is not going to be efficient, and will waste most of the ozone being produced. If you are using a hobbyist type aquarium ozone generator, residual ozone should not be an issue, unless you are in a small confined space. Ozone breaks down very quickly in water, if you already have carbon filtration in place, then you should be fine.

Thanks for the question,

Dave

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:31:32 +0000

Hi – I know it’s been a while since any comments on this post, but I am a graduate student working on a lab project and I need to find a way to inject ozone into my old Marineland 100 gallon freshwater recirculating tank.

I have an air dryer, ozone generator+controller, ORP electrode…however, I do not have a protein skimmer or reaction chamber of any sort. Is there any way I can bubble ozone through my existing system (in the sump), if I am using both mechanical and carbon filtration already??

If not, do you have any advice on what type of protein skimmer I should use to react the ozone? I am guessing I should look for a skimmer that has an air vent I can cover with activated carbon so I don’t poison the place with ozone…?

Thanks for the fantastic article — any help would be appreciated! I am very much a novice at setting up aquaria.

Anna