Reef Central Online Community

Ken,
I enjoyed your article. I have had a dialyseas unit for almost five years. I have been very satisfied with its function. I have two criticisms and one correction of your article: the first I am almost certain is personal bias from my standpoint and very little fault of yours. The beginning of the article has a slight negative tone. Three negative quotations and only one positive qoutation as a prologue to an otherwise scientific article. Perhaps this section should have been used in the summary of the article rather than the prologue. In my experience on reefcentral this particular device often recieves a slightly negative bias, and unduely so. The general contention being that "changing" water manually is somehow a superior method than an automated method. (I disagree with this 100%. More on this later.) It is this treatment in the past that established my personal bias towards your article.(at the beginning that is)

The second criticsm is that you failed to illustrate the importance of this device performing its automated functions every 30 minutes over a 24 hour period. As you are a relatively new arrival to reef keeping it may not be clear to you how important " stability" in a reef tank truely is. I have a 800 gallon sytem and dialyse 8 gallons per day. This is 0.166 gallons every 30 minutes OR 240 gallons per month. Now it does not take a leap in faith for one to recognize that 0.166 gallons every 30 minutes in an 800 gallon system creates a much more stable enviroment,( such that the tank parameters seem to never change at all) versus 240 gallons once a month. In comparison 240 gallons once a month or even 120 gallons every two weeks, would be equivelent to shocking your system.

The one correction to your article is that your description of the dialysis process implies a simple osmotic exchange across the membrane but in fact since the diasylate is also passed across a pressure gradient the process is not only osmotic but also ultra filtrated.

Ken,please take these comments only as constructive critiscm,and please forgive any gramatical errors.

I find it really interesting that you chose to use a dialyseas on your first salt water tank.......You some how skipped the initiation of manual salt mixing and waterchanges etc and the work and frequent poor results that accompany this and went straight to the head of the class. kudo's to you.

Oh, please check out my gallery "a picture is worth a thousand words"

I also have no financial or proprietal ties to Seavisions of South Florida. But I have been a believer in the dialyseas unit from the beginning...It just makes sense to me. I have been beating up on Gerry for five years to write a new manual maybe you will get him to get it done.