Potassium Permanganate Question

Well, doesn't ozone treatment perform the same function? Oxidation?

Does anyone still use ozone generators or have they fallen out of favor? They have been used for quite some time and are reef safe....

 

Hi,

Well I walked back into the office on Monday and was welcomed with a "mild" mat of red slime on 50% of the sand and 25% of the rock. So I started treating the tank.

There were instructions to remove the poly filters and biologic filters when treating the tank. So I cut the feed line to my w/d and just stuck it in the sump. I have been slowly adding PP to the system. I am now up to a level that is close to the fully recommended dosage.

Results thus far:

1. Fish are still happy! Whew
2. In 48 hours 3/4s+ of the cyno is gone and no new cyno is appearing.
3. The tank is cloudy. I assume this is because of the lack of the poly and more importantly the increase of DOC in the system.
3. My skimmer is going nuts and producing gals of wet skimate! It is a big mother and is capable of producing several gals a day, but last night after dosing the tank it produced over 3 gals in 1 hour! I am replacing 5+ gals a day. I have my RODI running 4-5 hours a day to keep up with the demand.

FYI, I would not consider using this unless you have very strong skimming capacity with the ability to collect large volumes of skimate in a short period of time!You need a large catch bottle.

So, in short, the PP seems to be forcing the organic compounds that the cyno is feeding on into suspension allowing the skimmer to effectively pull it out. Also, I am seeing a spike in Nitrates. It has jumped from around 20ppm to 80. Nitrites are still running at 0. Be careful if you have inverts or a reef. I think I'm safe with my FOWLER. I'm starting to add Amquel today.

OK, I'm talked out for now. I'll keep posting as this progresses.

TTYL,

Bruce

 

Long winded ain't I.

 

How is this going??? ;D I am following with great interest.....

 

It has clearly knocked it back. It isn't gone. All the fish are happy. I'm leaving Sat for Hawaii for 10 days. I'm stopped treating the tank last Friday. I'm rehooking the w/d today to give the tank a chance to stabilize while I'm in town. I don't want to risk any spikes while I'm gone.

 

Hey Blade!


How are you making out with this????;D I am dying to know!

 

The PP knocked it back, but I have bigger problems.

I left town just after introducing some turbo snails and returned to a mass die off on 2 tanks. I've got 5 down and counting. They brought something nasty with them...

 

Sorry for your bad experience. How are things now?

The thing to recognize about oxidizers is that they actively seek out other things to oxidize. A lot of people accidentally nuked their tanks when they used to run ozone directly into the tank. If the amount of Ozone was too much, they would kill too many beneficial bacteria and then the tank would have to start to cycle again. Ozone is MUCH safer now that we are only putting it into skimmers with an air dryer. The disadvantage of PP is that it is in your display tank and it's hard to recover from an overdose.

Most bacteria live in a biofilm covering every surface of your tank. If your tank got cloudy as opposed to clearer, I suspect that their recommended dosage was too high and it killed much of the bacteria living in the biofilms and you had living bacteria forming a bacterial floc floating around deriving the nutrients from the dead bacteria.

Edit: After I hit enter, I thought of another possible explanation and I'm including it here.

 

After the die off I left the tank to the surviving crabs for 6 weeks. I skimmed the blink out of it, did 3 25% water changes and fed the crabs a minimal amount of food just to keep the tank cycling. I have another thread running (Help me restock my tank) on the restocking process.

So far so good. I am going veryyy veryyy slow for a while.