The effect of carbon on ozone...

[Scrandrew]

I got into a discussion with a LFS owner. In his store, he runs a Red Sea ozonizer. He adds the ozone directly into his skimmer. He does not run the return water over carbon.

Being new to the use of ozone, it is my intention to make a seperate 10 gallon tank to bubble ozone into the water column (sort of a low tech ozone reactor for my 210 gallon reef). I would then run the water from the 10 gallon tank over carbon, prior to its entering my sump.

Upon reading the Sprung books, he also runs the "ozone water" over carbon. He refers to the carbon as being able to remove excess ozone from the water.

My discussion with the LFS owner revealed his posiiton on this issue. In response to my questioning of his failure to employ carbon, he stated, "...I was told by the distributor that I need not run the effluent over carbon. Additionally, how is carbon supposed to know what ozone is excess, and what is not excess?"

I now bring this query to you. It is my understanding that you want no ozone drirectly entering your display tank. As such, I am keeping the ozone in a seperate ten gallon tank. Any residual ozone then will hopefully be removed by the carbon. Did Sprung misspeak when he said "excess ozone?" Does carbon remove all ozone? How could carbon by "smart enough" to remove only excess ozone, the point of the LFS owner. Maybe this question is splitting hairs, but, I want to be sure that I truly understand the chemistry.

Thoughts?

A~

[Henry Bowman]

You are correct, you do NOT want o3 running into your tank. It is a very powerful oxidizer and can potentially burn the flesh of anything it touches (corals, anenomes, fish gills etc). Running it over carbon removes all of it, not just the excess. If you or the LFS owner ran the skimmer effluent over carbon you have insurance that the o3 has no chance to make it into the display.

It (o3) is pretty unstable and will gass off quickly. The LFS owner may be luckier than he is smart and the o3 is gassing off before it makes it to his display. Otherwise, he'd be killing his livestock !

I wouldn't chance it in my tank nor would I recommend not running it over carbon.

HTH

[Fishbulb2]

Yeah, i completely agree with Henry. What scares me is that this LFS owner has a very poor understanding of ozone or chemistry in general. Basically, if he ever tells you something in the future that sounds fishy (pun intended), I would research it for yourself. Carbon will of course remove all ozone, but you wouldn't want ANY in contact with your animals anyways. I do know many people who do not run carbon with their ozone, but they tend to use far less mg/L/hr than recommended. And even then, it's risky.
FB

[Scrandrew]

Thanks so much for your answers. The way that you two explained makes sense.

A~