Ozone in a Marine Tank

[J McCauley]

I have over the last 6 months learned a lot from this site and I thank you for that help, both directly (by replies to my questions) and indirectly (by replies to others questions). I have had some problems with my FO tank over the last two weeks. I have a 125 AGA with a 2229 and 2217 Eheim canister filters and an AquaC Remora Pro skimmer. The fish I had in the tank were a Volitan Lion, a Snowflake Eel, a Bursa Trigger and a Fox face Lo. They have been put into the tank the that order with about 1 month in between. I did not have a quarantine tank (will now) and had no troubles until I put the Fox face in. Over the last 2 weeks I lost the Lion and the Fox face. I have a some questions that are in kind of a random order, please bare with me on this.

All was well with tank, as far as I could tell, before I put the Fox face Lo into the tank. After I put him in, and started to feed him Romaine lettuce, the Lion stopped eating and his color faded. His eyes started to cloud over and started to have problems breathing. He died within a few days. The Fox face came down with same systems plus he had what looked like rough skin. He also died after few days. The parameters of the tank were: Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 30, ph 7.9, temp 80, SG 1.021, and phosphate 1.5..The ph had started at 8.2 when I first set the tank up and had slowly gotten to 7.9. I do a 20 gallon water change once a month.

On the advise of a LFS I started to raise the ph by using a ph booster and took the back part of the glass cover off and put egg crate on to let CO2 escape. He also had me put a ozone maker in line with air pump into tank. This I did for 4 hours before talking to few a other people at other LFS's and they told me not to put the ozone directly into the tank that it would kill the fish I had left. Your thoughts: is CO2 lowering my ph and can the ozone directly into the tank, unmonitored, be a problem?
I checked the parameters of the tank 2 days after turning off the ozone, putting the egg crate on, adding two days worth of buffer, and using only air from an air stone into the tank and they are as follows: Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, ph 8.2, temp 80, SG 1.021, and phosphate 1.5... Can the ozone reduce the Nitrate to 0?
Any other advise you can give is very well welcomed!!!!!
Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[DonW]

I'm not a firm believer in ph buffer, its alot easier to do a water change and correct the high co2 problem. Ozone is safe as long as you use it properly. Dumping it directly into your tank is dangerous and will kill everything. It needs to monitored with a orp probe/controller. The max I would bring orp up to with ozone would be about 450. Without a meter there is no way to tell.

Don

 

[mojoreef]

Yea ozone directly into the tank is not a good plan. As Don Said you must monitor it also, too much and it can kill, so if you have no way of monitoring it youhave no idea if the levels are safe or not. Also you want to have it pump into your skimmer and then into or through a bag of carbon, that way it insure thier is no residule amount getting into the tank.
In regards to the problem at hand. Did you start noticing the problem when you began to add the romaine lettuce to the tank?? is the lettuce organically grown?? or it could have all sort of pesticides on it??

I am going to move this thread to our fish forum so Terry can keep an eye on it to.


Mike

 

[cwcross]

I don't think ozone is necessary. I can see a reason to use it in a very large tank (maybe greater than 500 gallons). Ozone will chew up any organics in there if it gets too high. Its like chlorine. It will kill bacteria, micro algea fish etc if not controlled. As far as its interaction with Nitrate, I don't know.

 

[Terry B]

Ozone has an application, but I don't see much use for it for most hobbyists. Ozone is not a substitute for quarantine. If your pH is low then you should find the source of the problem rather than just add a buffer. Do you have good water surface aggitation? If you have too many fish in a tank it can cause the pH to fall. If you have an overactive biofilter due to too many fish or overfeeding it will pull your pH down. Do you use kalkwasser? It can help keep the pH up.

You may have a parasite in your tank that is killing the fish. Do you quarantine all new fish for 3+ weeks before you put tem in your display tank?

Terry B

 

[J McCauley]

Thanks for all the input!

After putting in egg crate across 50% of the top and having an airstone run for 12 hours at night my ph has stayed at 8.2

I have installed a 15 watt uv system and taken the ozone generator out

The romaine lettice was not organically grown and in future will either use that kind or buy food specially from LFS for the next Foxface Lo.