Micro Scrubbing Bubbles.

Cruz_Arias · Apr 3, 2016

Its hard for an electrical guy to explain twinkling but i guess i can allude to it in electrical terms. It looks like a spark of static electricity in a completely dark room... but of course, way smaller.

Rick.45cal · Apr 3, 2016

This is an interesting thread. (I've been lurking)

I wrote an email to the company that makes the carbon based ceramic nano bubble nozzles from the video we will see if I get a response.

It looks like that if you produce a small enough micro-bubble that it will "shrink" to a nano-bubble as long as it doesn't coalesce with another bubble in still water. It appears that the bubbles will shrink On their own, likely due to the extreme surface tension created by a bubble of such small dimensions.

I'm interested to see where this thread leads.

Reefahholic · Apr 3, 2016

Frag tank in testing...corals sliming like crazy.

The Macro Guy · Apr 4, 2016

Either a facebook post was deleted or someone showed something they didn't want to show, not sure why they are keeping it a secret or maybe the post was just buried into oblivion.

But there is a way to plumb just a regular mag style pump with a large PVC capsule with a slightly smaller open end on the other side and having the airstone inside it, so that all the bubbles are sucked directly into the pump and spit out into the tank from the top from a 90 degree bend, from what I can tell the method yielded a much better bubble ratio, and little to no wasted bubbles. Right now with our current the method alot of the bubbles just go straight up to the surface. I'm going to work on one over the week and post the DIY here, incase someone is trying to turn this free source into a profit. Smh...

Also a little update as far as having an extra airstone inside of my skimmer, the skimmate is much much darker, I believe it is more or less just breaking up the normal large chunks that would use to gather. The neck gunk buildup is much finer, not sure if that really helps anything.

Lasse · Apr 4, 2016

One of the proposed features of nano bubbles is that they are stable in the water column. If someone take a water sample from totally clean salt water, use a pointer and testing for "twinkling" properties before bubbling and after bubbling. After that -let the sample stands with circulation for a fortnight - testing every day. In this way we would get an indication if there exist any nanobubbles in the bubbled water.

Sincerely Lasse

Greenstreet.1 · Apr 4, 2016

Funny thing you say this with led flashlight in main display I seen twinkling and non but I'm wait to get a laser. Also did my water change but the water in the bucket had none

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 4, 2016

Cruz_Arias said:
No... this twinkling is more prismatic... scattering is more diffused (like the moon)

Scattering.

There isn't anything else that random particulates or bubbles do except absorb and scatter light (except for fluorescence and phosphorescence, and those will change the color, typically, and are properties of the individual molecules).

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 4, 2016

Cruz_Arias said:
@Randy,

Its hard for an electrical guy to explain twinkling but i guess i can allude to it in electrical terms. It looks like a spark of static electricity in a completely dark room... but of course, way smaller.

To me that sounds like a particle or bubble moving into then out of the beam, scattering for a brief time when in the right position in the beam.

Cruz_Arias · Apr 4, 2016

Agreed, Randy... could be either. I'd like to be optimistic... lol

The DO and ORP was extremely low in the non aerated makeup. But considerably higher in the aerated makeup. Both 20 gallon tanks' water were made up in a cleaned (a vinegar solution to keep the bottom clear of any calcium buildup), RO rinsed, 55 gallon foodgrade barrel. 1.026 sg, 35ppt 78°F. Oh almost forgot. ReefGrow Supplemental Elements to bring up a few values...

Once again, just observations.

Cruz_Arias · Apr 4, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
To me that sounds like a particle or bubble moving into then out of the beam, scattering for a brief time when in the right position in the beam.

Yes, definitely not a spark... but attempting to explain the twinkling. Hahaha!

Cruz_Arias · Apr 4, 2016

Greenstreet.1 said:
Funny thing you say this with led flashlight in main display I seen twinkling and non but I'm wait to get a laser. Also did my water change but the water in the bucket had none

Its hard for me to explain to someone, unless it's seen first hand...

cb684 · Apr 4, 2016

Rick.45cal said:
This is an interesting thread. (I've been lurking)

I wrote an email to the company that makes the carbon based ceramic nano bubble nozzles from the video we will see if I get a response.

It looks like that if you produce a small enough micro-bubble that it will "shrink" to a nano-bubble as long as it doesn't coalesce with another bubble in still water. It appears that the bubbles will shrink On their own, likely due to the extreme surface tension created by a bubble of such small dimensions.

I'm interested to see where this thread leads.

They responded a few days ago. The price I got was 3400 U$.
Edit: There is another option: here. The one I got is the BT-50. I will receive it today (I hope). In this case you will need high pressure to make the bubbles so a high-head pump is necessary. The one I am planning to use is a diaphragm washdown pump.

Cruz_Arias · Apr 4, 2016

The Macro Guy said:
Either a facebook post was deleted or someone showed something they didn't want to show, not sure why they are keeping it a secret or maybe the post was just buried into oblivion.

But there is a way to plumb just a regular mag style pump with a large PVC capsule with a slightly smaller open end on the other side and having the airstone inside it, so that all the bubbles are sucked directly into the pump and spit out into the tank from the top from a 90 degree bend, from what I can tell the method yielded a much better bubble ratio, and little to no wasted bubbles. Right now with our current the method alot of the bubbles just go straight up to the surface. I'm going to work on one over the week and post the DIY here, incase someone is trying to turn this free source into a profit. Smh...

Also a little update as far as having an extra airstone inside of my skimmer, the skimmate is much much darker, I believe it is more or less just breaking up the normal large chunks that would use to gather. The neck gunk buildup is much finer, not sure if that really helps anything.

To build a device to generate consistently sized bubbles takes capital.

There was time and money invested in the endeavor.

That's why there are different price ranges to skimmers from the DIY soda pop bottles and DIY PVC skimmers versus the high end polished, shiny, cast acrylic ones!

That's why the wooden airstone methodolgy was released to the hobby altruistically... for the betterment of the hobby.

Remember too, bottled water carries a nice profit margin too.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 4, 2016

Greenstreet.1 said:
Funny thing you say this with led flashlight in main display I seen twinkling and non but I'm wait to get a laser. Also did my water change but the water in the bucket had none

If you see "twinkling" with a light source that is much broader than the size of a possible particle or bubble in the beam (like a flashlight), then that implies something that is changing during the time the object is in the beam, and the only thing I can think of that changes in that way would be scattering from a nonspherical object (hence not likely a bubble) that is rotating/tumbling. In some orientations it will scatter more light than others and might cause "twinkling".

Along these lines, folks have shown that fluid flow can actually align microbes in the ocean, impacting light scattering by bacteria and phytoplankton:

Microbial alignment in flow changes ocean light climate
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3054027/

"Sunlight attenuates as it passes through seawater, exerting a fundamental control on marine productivity by limiting the depth at which photosynthesis can occur (1–3). The extinction of sunlight is governed by the inherent optical properties (IOPs) of seawater, which are determined largely by the light-scattering characteristics of suspended living and nonliving microscopic particles (4)"

"Analogous to the shaken test tubes, the ocean can be characterized by intense fluid motion and abundant microorganisms. We demonstrate that the swirl patterns arise when elongated microorganisms align preferentially in the direction of fluid flow and alter light scattering. "

cb684 · Apr 4, 2016

Cruz_Arias said:
No... this twinkling is more prismatic... scattering is more diffused (like the moon)

Are you trying to explain the difference between refraction and reflection?

Cruz_Arias · Apr 4, 2016

cb684 said:
Are you trying to explain the difference between refraction and reflection?

Yes...

according to nanobubble journals, forgot where I read it, but they said that depending on the light or laser source, nanobubbles reflect AND refract depending on angle of incident with the light source.
Which was very interesting... Shiny enough to reflect light back, yet translucent, as a clear bubble, to refract. Similar to a pane of glass.

The light scattering we see makes the smallest bubbles appear as white flecks under light... but the twinkling, I believe is the refraction.

My test subject was 2 20 gallon standard tanks utilizing water from the same batch mix at 78°F and 35ppt salinity, approx. 1.026sg. Salt brand was Salinity and additives of Reefgrow to adjust levels as typical.

@Randy Holmes-Farley @Squamosa

Thales · Apr 4, 2016

Greenstreet.1 said:
Funny thing you say this with led flashlight in main display I seen twinkling and non but I'm wait to get a laser. Also did my water change but the water in the bucket had none

Were you looking at both the tank and the bucket from the same angle? Looking would be similar to the way we look for fish larvae - from the top you see little but from the side you see more.

Cruz_Arias · Apr 4, 2016

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
If you see "twinkling" with a light source that is much broader than the size of a possible particle or bubble in the beam (like a flashlight), then that implies something that is changing during the time the object is in the beam, and the only thing I can think of that changes in that way would be scattering from a nonspherical object (hence not likely a bubble) that is rotating/tumbling. In some orientations it will scatter more light than others and might cause "twinkling".

Along these lines, folks have shown that fluid flow can actually align microbes in the ocean, impacting light scattering by bacteria and phytoplankton:

Microbial alignment in flow changes ocean light climate
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3054027/

"Sunlight attenuates as it passes through seawater, exerting a fundamental control on marine productivity by limiting the depth at which photosynthesis can occur (1–3). The extinction of sunlight is governed by the inherent optical properties (IOPs) of seawater, which are determined largely by the light-scattering characteristics of suspended living and nonliving microscopic particles (4)"

"Analogous to the shaken test tubes, the ocean can be characterized by intense fluid motion and abundant microorganisms. We demonstrate that the swirl patterns arise when elongated microorganisms align preferentially in the direction of fluid flow and alter light scattering. "

Ah... the angle of incident of light can be bent or skewed by localized salt concentration in the water itself too? Just a thought...

I apologize if the "twinkling" word was the best description I had at that moment... LOL

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 4, 2016

Cruz_Arias said:
Yes... according to nanobubble journals, forgot where I read it, but they said that depending on the light or laser source, nanobubbles reflect AND refract depending on angle of incident with the light source.
Which was very interesting... Shiny enough to reflect light back, yet translucent, as a clear bubble, to refract. Similar to a pane of glass.

The light scattering we see makes the smallest bubbles appear as white flecks under light... but the twinkling, I believe is the refraction.

Refraction does not twinkle unless something is changing with time. It is not time dependent. It is simply the bending of light at interfaces. It is steady unless the object is tumbling and not symmetrical (e.g., probably not a bubble), or is large relative to the beam size and so moves in and out of the beam (like scattering would). Aside from the angular dependence (which folks here are not discussing), I do not see how you are distinguishing scattering from refraction using a laser pointer.

FWIW, here's a detailed comment from the manufacturer of machines designed to measure particle sizes by light scattering:

http://www.shimadzu.com/an/powder/sald/data/appli/app10.html

"When reports come in of Micro-bubbles and nano-bubbles existing in a stable state for a long time, we are sometimes confronted with the question of whether they really are air bubbles or in fact particles (solids or liquids?).
Yet, it is extremely difficult to judge whether they are air bubbles or particles merely by taking a glance at them. Also, it is impossible to judge this by measuring bubble size distribution or particle size distribution and looking at these measurement results."

In summary, their machine can do it, but the difference is minor and relates to the relative amount of light scattering at different angles. It is not a simple DIY with a laser pointer.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 4, 2016

Cruz_Arias said:
Ah... the angle of incident of light can be bent or skewed by localized salt concentration in the water itself too? Just a thought...
I apologize if the "twinkling" word was the best description I had at that moment... LOL

I'm not sure what you mean by localized salt concentrations. The mere presence of an air bubble with a refractive index of 1 is a far bigger local effect than is the very VERY small changes in ions at its surface. So no special ion effect needs to be invoked to get scattering (or refraction, if you prefer), but none of these will be time dependent to cause "twinkling" unless the objects are either nonuniform and rotating (not a bubble), or are big relative to the beam size and so translational movement takes then across the beam in the time frame of the "twinkle".