Corraline algae and ozone

[Cory]

Cool! Let us know if corraline algae improves! Mine is small too only 38 gallons total water volume. I'd love to run an the intake of my skimmer outside too but it's too cold and I need a house rather than an apartment.

 

[UK_Pete]

Hi Cory,

Well when I calculated the heat energy required for 0 degree C air (32 F) as being high, I was assuming a much greater production of CO2 in the tank, and so a much greater air flow. I calculated for a 50 g fish dying and being converted to CO2 in 24 hours, I would need 500 kg of air a day to make sure the CO2 didn't go above 30 ppm more that the outdoor air. But that would cost about 940 USD a year in heating assuming 0 degree outside temp and zero humidity, which is worse than reality but in the right ball park for me. Much of the energy is used to evaporate tank water too. If you accept that in the case that a fish dies pH will drop but recover after 24 hours, and limit the pH drop to what people seem to say is safe-ish, about 7.7, you can tolerate, according to my (possibility inaccurate) calcs, the flowed air being about 1000 ppm (if its close to equilibrium with the tank, causing a tank pH of around 7.7ish), which equates to about 1000 litres of air per hour, or 24 kg per day. So the total heating bill is reduced to 45 USD a year, much better. In reality it would be lower, perhaps half to 3 quarters that figure, because air temps are not always 0 degrees here where I live, and humidity is frequently quite high (both of these reduce heating cost).

Thats for tank crash conditions, but as for normal daily conditions, I had no idea how much CO2 is normally generated by my tank. So I connected up the skimmer intake just to see. From the pH rise in the tank it seems to me I have very low CO2 being generated in the tank, because otherwise with the low air flow I have (500lph), my pH would not rise so much. This flow of air probably only costs about 10 to 15 USD a year, but the result on my pH is powerful. So maybe you can find a gap to the outdoors somewhere you can run a thin pipe to and try it it would be worth it. Won't cost much in energy. To reduce the flow restriction of the pipe, I ran 10mm pipe to the wall where there was already a hole from a previous cable TV install, and ran a short (15 inch) length of 6mm inside diameter pipe just through the wall as it fitted through the old CATV hole. If your flat is really sealed up, you might have a ventilation system you could poke the pipe into to draw outside air direct from the ventilation system for instance.

Cheers, Pete

 

[UK_Pete]

Oh, I forgot to say, my coralline (on a few chunks of live rock and such) after 3 or 4 days of raised pH is showing thin, sharp white edges, which in the past I associated with coralline growth. Too early to say if this is right though. I really need to get some carbon on the tank to clean up organics, although I haven't found any forum threads on the internet in general where people have said carbon increases coralline, but theres plenty of info from the likes of Randy and other scientific authorities that organics reduce calcium carbonate precipitation. Also high organics seem to reduce coral growth from anecdotes on the internet, and I think IIRC Randy did say its quite possible that this is a true effect. So if coralline is similar to SPS in its internal chemistry of carbonate precipitation it would follow that organics might be bad for coralline.

I also was reading a few threads on purple up. Its just aragonite ground up fine with I believe calcium chloride (part of 2 part) from looking at the patent. Randy and many others have said its highly unlikely to have any effect on reef aquaria, due to its aragonites low solubility at tank conditions, but on the other hand many people seem to swear it works. The placebo effect is well known to be strong so it could be that, but I wondered if it might have an effect on organics. Reason is that under supersaturated calcium carbonate conditions, like in tanks, fine particles of calcium carbonate act as seeds for further precipitation of calcium carbonate. But when theres organics present, the organics bind to the growing crystals of calcium carbonate and poison them from further growth, but in the process they remove the organics from the water. So I wondered if the fine aragonite might be acting as seeds first, allowing a growth of pure calcium carbonate, which then acts to attract a layer of organics, removing the organics from the water, making skimmable particles with organics bound to them, or just carrying the organics to the sand bed and holding them there. There was a paper where they studied this and found that when they cranked up the alk of seawater with organics in it, the higher the organics, the more alk they had to add to precipitate calcium carbonate. They found that with high organics, very small crystals of calcium carbonate formed, then organics attached to them, and precipitation stopped. But the organics remained bound to the very small calcium particles. Interesting, and I thought I might grind up a bit of aragonite sand with a pestle and mortar and try adding it as a homemade purple up (I am loathe to buy high priced purple up as I mostly believe its snake oil!).

 

[Cory]

Id like to update this thread. Now that I have ozone running corraline is growing all over the rocks. Purple corraline and some pinks. Ozones been running about 2 months.

Also some.nice branching corraline growing. Strange how just by using ozone corraline started to grow.