Who monitors their ORP readings?

[lostcreekreefer]

This system is the other reason I use a battery backup on my pumps. If the power goes off, all of the head water in the tank will most likely go over the overflow in the sump. Then when the power comes back on the pumps could suck the one compartment on my sump dry until the ATO kicks up enough RO water to make up the difference.

This subject/thread seems to really reach across several interesting topics .

My wife has seen all of the time & money invested in the setup & maintenance of my system, and has read some limited information on some sort of battery or generator backup for when the power goes off (not if the power goes off); she is concerned about that eventuality. In the years prior to getting the tank we have had some over day long power outages and once I think we went over 2 days w/o electricity. One of the 'advantages & benefits' of living out in the sticks. When we get a sliver thaw (ice storm) the poor folks from our local utility (Mission Valley Power) work outside in horrible conditions for many long days to get it all fixed, so it can take a while to get to some of us if it is the whole valley being affected.

So what has any body done for this eventuality? I see Devon has some sort of battery backup (UPS?) for his return pumps. I wonder how long a person could keep that sort of system going (days?)? How many pumps, what size & how many hours do you figure the battery BU's will last in your situation, Devon? Does any body have a generator? What aquarium function should be prioritized as essential, which others are we OK with out for 1-2 (more?) days? How do you get the power to the tank and the equipment you have chosen to keep going; there are LOTS of things to plug in back there, how do you service them all? Has anybody gone to the extent of having some sort of an emergency generator hooked into their main service panel for power outages? You can get 'em at Lowe's or Home Depot, all it takes is money!

Debbie would really like me to have a plan...right now I hope the power doesn't go off for too long . I think I need a better plan. We did have a 5 hour outage last month (or so) and nothing bad happened, but the whole thing was down, no heat, lights or water flow, not so good....made me real nervous, and when more fish arrive, I'd bet the duration of good conditions in the system will get much shorter, making a backup plan all the more important! I think I'll shut up now & see what you alll have to say...

[charlie]

Backup= Coleman Powermate.
6250 watts of backup generator, has saved my sorry *** 3-4 times in the past. 4-5 hours is the max Kevin, otherwise things start to go south. When my power goes out, I will wait 45 minutes and then Mr. Coleman comes out. In the past I have run all 5 downstairs tanks, and the TV. The important, most important is the main return pump to keep circulation going. Oh, and a few heaters also. I have also run the skimmers for aeration. Lights...........don't really need them, but I could run my actinics if I wanted.
Get yourself a generator, the gas you spend will be well worth it.

[lostcreekreefer]

Backup= Coleman Powermate.
6250 watts of backup generator, has saved my sorry *** 3-4 times in the past. 4-5 hours is the max Kevin, otherwise things start to go south. When my power goes out, I will wait 45 minutes and then Mr. Coleman comes out. In the past I have run all 5 downstairs tanks, and the TV. The important, most important is the main return pump to keep circulation going. Oh, and a few heaters also. I have also run the skimmers for aeration. Lights...........don't really need them, but I could run my actinics if I wanted.
Get yourself a generator, the gas you spend will be well worth it.

Great answer, Charlie! I guess we can go into more detail day after tomorrow, then. What does a generator like that run, approx $$$? My question with an outside generator set-up like that is how have you distributed the power to the various pieces of equipment and in your case, various tanks. 6250 watts is plenty, for sure. What does the Powermate have on it for plugging stuff in? do you just run cords in through door(s) window(s) and across the floor? Seems like a nightmare to figure our & how to get the cord indoors when it's cold outside? I wonder if there is a way to "plug it into" the main service with some sort of retrofit to the main service box outside or the breaker panel inside?

I pretty well figured I was out near the upper time limit for my tank, and it was not a real great feeling .

[charlie]

Great answer, Charlie! I guess we can go into more detail day after tomorrow, then. What does a generator like that run, approx $$$?

Cost me $800

My question with an outside generator set-up like that is how have you distributed the power to the various pieces of equipment and in your case, various tanks. 6250 watts is plenty, for sure. What does the Powermate have on it for plugging stuff in? do you just run cords in through door(s) window(s) and across the floor?

I just run extension cords from the generator to the plugs. It hopefully is only temporary.
I think I have about 4 110 outlets on mine and a 220.

Seems like a nightmare to figure our & how to get the cord indoors when it's cold outside? I wonder if there is a way to "plug it into" the main service with some sort of retrofit to the main service box outside or the breaker panel inside?

That requires some serious safety considerations Kevin, especially for those guys that work out in the cold. That and alot of dollars.

I pretty well figured I was out near the upper time limit for my tank, and it was not a real great feeling .

Amen!!!!

[DevonM]

It's a long story but here goes....

When I first setup my tank I ran everything except for the lights through an APC 850 Watt computer backup that I purchased from Best Buy. The backup was supposed to last for 2.5 hours but I later found out that was with a 60 watt load . I plugged everything that was needed to be constantly "on" into a power strip that was then plugged into the battery backup side of the unit and the rest got plugged into the "surge protection only" side.

I soon realized that with the two Mag 24s I was running around 500 watts constantly and that my backup would only give me about 10 minutes of use. The other thing I didn't account for was the extra load spike it took to start up a pump as apposed to keeping it running (which overheated my backup). Then when I added the 90 gallon refuge return pump (Mag 18) I was really diminishing my backup time.

So I looked for a while at what was out there and realized that nothing was designed to back up "electrical motors or pumps" except for a generator with a voltage regulator build in. I looked at getting a generator that automatically started and supplied power to the house via a switch board but that required a generator with an auto start. This option would end up costing around $3K to do it right. Needless to say I didn't have to cash to invest into this type of security. I did however borrow a 3000 watt generator from my family and paired it with a long 10 (bigger than 12) gauge extension cord for extended outages. Make sure to have extra gas on hand.

When I was looking into solar and generator solutions I was told to check out a battery shop to see if they could help. I went to Batteries Plus and chatted with the guy working (who also had a fish tank and had contemplated some sort of battery backup) and he said that someone had once dropped off a huge server style battery back up, actually a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) and that they never came back to pick it up. His thoughts were they didn't want to pay the price for two new batteries for inside the unit ($80 each). The guy working there ended up selling the UPS to me for $250 with new batteries and told me to try it out and if it didn't work to bring it back. I tried it and it worked (I didn't max the time of back up) so I plugged the UPS into the surge side of my battery backup and have had no problem keeping my main return pumps (Mag 24s) going.

On another note, I spend a lot of time in the Flathead so I realize there is a possibility of not being around during an extended outage. For this purpose I have justified the purchase of 2 VorTech MP40 pumps with the optional battery backup (30 hours). My hope is that I could get home within this time period or have someone come over and start the generator for me if I wasn't able to do it myself. And that's my long response .

[charlie]

And a great reply. That about tells it all Devon!!! Thanx for the explanation, even if it took us into tomorrow and 3 people fell asleep after the second paragraph!!!!

j/k man

[CutthroatKid]

Great response there Devon. I only nodded off twice. ;)

We have a generator here that is the extension cord type, but in AL we had some god awful giant thing that lasted five days running all appliances and a tv. We had the main box wired to flip the power manually and then just plug the generator into the house.

[Sarmo]

The KOFI radio tower is my next door nieghbor. the power company gets them going fairly fast. i've had power off ofr 4-5 hours and i was getting a bit nervous. i think i actually took a hand blender to agitate the surface for a little O2. the fish go into hiding so they use less oxygen but you still have to worry about pH swings.....

i guess i need a better plan

[zhenya]

I just wanted to take a quick pole to see who monitors their ORP readings and what they run normally?

My tank, since I have started up the fuge, has been running 395 during the majority of the day and then in the morning it's up to 415. Pretty stable for the most part (I think).

I've found that monitoring this reading has been one of the best ways for me to see how my system is responding to tank husbandry (water changes, filtering, feeding, etc.).

Devon,

Do you clean your probe often? These probes notoriously give erroneous results if not cleaned, basically they read much higher than the actual ORP is.
And for those who are thinking of running ozone, take a look at this old thread,
I have ORP controller with the ozone generator and I rarely have ORP at 400, unless I want to dump huge amounts of O3 in my tank and I don't.
I've been an ozone fan since the 06, it does what it supposed to do and that being making your tank water sparkle. ;)

As far as monitoring your tank's ORP I think it is a great idea.

[DevonM]

Devon,

Do you clean your probe often? These probes notoriously give erroneous results if not cleaned, basically they read much higher than the actual ORP is.
And for those who are thinking of running ozone, take a look at this old thread,
I have ORP controller with the ozone generator and I rarely have ORP at 400, unless I want to dump huge amounts of O3 in my tank and I don't.
I've been an ozone fan since the 06, it does what it supposed to do and that being making your tank water sparkle. ;)

As far as monitoring your tank's ORP I think it is a great idea.

I have not cleaned it regularly. I mean I shake it in the water to make sure there isn't any debris on it quite regularly. How do you clean yours?

[zhenya]

I have not cleaned it regularly. I mean I shake it in the water to make sure there isn't any debris on it quite regularly. How do you clean yours?

Devon,

I soak mine in vinegar about every other week. Some people do it weekly but I found it every other week is fine for me.
Anyway, do me a favor, next time you shake yours in the water scrape the metal wire at the end of the probe with your finger nail and see what readings you get after you put it back into the water again. Makes you wonder if anything else is interfering with the readings.
If you don't run ozone it is not as crucial to have accurate reading but with ozone it becomes quite important.
Anyway, when you get a chance read that long winded link I posted in my first post. There are lots of comments on the probes and ways of cleaning and calibrating them.

Oh, and if you add alkalinity supplement anywhere near that probe you'll see some changes in reading as well.
Weird!

[lostcreekreefer]

Devon,

Do you clean your probe often? These probes notoriously give erroneous results if not cleaned, basically they read much higher than the actual ORP is.
And for those who are thinking of running ozone, take a look at this old thread,
I have ORP controller with the ozone generator and I rarely have ORP at 400, unless I want to dump huge amounts of O3 in my tank and I don't.
I've been an ozone fan since the 06, it does what it supposed to do and that being making your tank water sparkle. ;)

As far as monitoring your tank's ORP I think it is a great idea.

HI Gene & Devon-
Interesting, Gene, that you mention the OPR being 'rarely at 400', and Devon's is over 400 (like mine). I have noticed mine creeping upwards over time. I've had the ORP probe in for something like 6 weeks. So per your advise, I have cleaned my ORP probe just this morning. I also cleaned the pH prob on the Neptune Apex Monitor to see if it made a difference. Ph pre-clean = 8.19, the probe spent 10 minutes in vinegar (pH = 4.25) rinsed & back in the tank. pH now = 8.19, so no help there (or no problem there!)

ORP probe was reading 439 this morning ( a new high). Placed it in vinegar for 10 minutes. Vinegar ORP = 660 ! , but over the 10 minutes the ORP slowly at first, then more rapidly lowered to where it stopped at 525. Rinsed the probe in RODI water several times and returned it to the tank. Initially the new, cleaned ORP = 320, and over 10 minutes lowered to 317 where it has remained for 1/2 hour. This is about where it was reading once it was acclimated to use in the tank at the beginning of use.

Has anybody figured out what is coating the probe to alter it's readings. Seems like we are electroplating it with 'whatever' as we use it...is that a reasonable assumption?

Cool experiment, now another new maintenance procedure. No problem, a person can just do it when you're cleaning the skimmer. The probes just sit there, don't need to watch it happening (a watched probe never cleans?).

[kevinpo]

Hello,
I've been running ozone on my tanks for 8 years or so I monitor ORP also. I use a Milwaukee ORP controller. I leave it running while I soak it in vinegar for one hour each week.
Here is an excellent article by my friend Randy that covers ORP in detail:
ORP and the Reef Aquarium by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
Also a short cool explanation he posted the other day for the everyday reefkeeper

"Simplified ORP

Imagine a reef aquarium as a vast battlefield. No, more vast. Much, much more. OK, that's ORP. That is, ORP is a measure of who is winning and who is losing the battle. The battle is never won by one side or the other. As an aquarist, you do not want it to be, or else everything in the tank would be dead. In other situations, such as the purification of tap water for drinking, allowing the oxidizers to win is fine. A high enough ORP (650+ mv) can kill most bacteria in a few seconds.

On one side of this aquarium battle there are the oxidizers. They all want to get electrons, and they rip them off of the bodies of the enemy. The foot soldiers of the oxidizers are oxygen molecules (O2). Did I say the battle is vast? On one day last week, there were 342,418,226,849,748,675,496,726 of these little guys roaming my aquarium, looking for action. Some of these are paratroopers, arriving at the aquarium out of the air. Others are made in secret labs, otherwise known as photosynthetic organisms such as many corals and algae.

Unfortunately, despite their vast numbers, the oxygen molecules are not very effective fighters. In many cases, they can swarm all over the enemy and still not prevail. The true leaders of the oxidizers are far less numerous, but considerably more potent fighters. These include ozone (O3), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), triplet oxygen (3O2), and a variety of oxygen radicals, some with such inspiring names such as superoxide radical (O2-). They also include chlorine (Cl2) and chloramine (NH2Cl). It turns out that oxygen molecules (O2) can occasionally morph into some of these better fighters (such as hydrogen peroxide), sometimes all on their own, but most frequently when they get blasted with UV light.

The oxidizers also have other types of fighters. Some are present at very low concentration, but are so sensitive to the state of the battle, that one can gauge the battle by how many of them are left standing at any given point in time. Metals, for example, such as iron (as ferric ion, Fe+++) can serve this purpose. The other oxidizers also include anions such as hypochlorite (ClO-), iodate (IO3-) and nitrate (NO3-), among a host of others.

On the other side are the reducers. The reducers all want to get rid of electrons, and they virtually throw them at the oxidizers. Many of these are organic molecules. They are not as numerous as the oxidizers, but many are much larger. Some are more than 10,000 times as large as an oxygen molecule. So they can make up for low numbers with pure brawn. That is not to say that the reducers do not have small but potent soldiers. The antioxidant vitamins, like vitamin C, for example, are small but extremely potent reducing agents. The reducers also number on their side some inorganic compounds, such as ammonia, iodide, and a really nasty fellow, sulfide.

The reducers come from fish food, metabolic waste products, the breakdown of dead organisms, and certain additives put into the aquarium (e.g., iron supplements that contain ferrous ion). The surfaces of most organisms themselves enter the fray as reducers, waiting to be oxidized by the enemy.

Interestingly, most soldiers on both sides are suicide attackers. Oxygen, ozone, and hydrogen peroxide are all destroyed when they react with a reducer. While not strictly suicidal, most organics are heavily damaged by oxidizer attacks, and are slowly degraded, eventually ending up as carbon dioxide if oxidized enough. They tend to be found in areas that the oxidizers hate; that is, in areas of low oxygen. Yet, the reducers are also sneaky, and even manage to get their hands inside cells (even finding positions in photosynthesis itself).

So Where Does ORP Fit Into All This?

ORP is a measure of the relative fighting ability of the oxidizers and the reducers. Think of the surface of the ORP electrode as a surface that these various fighters are hurling themselves against for practice. If there are lots of potent oxidizers around, and not so many reducers, ORP rises because the electrode senses more oxidizing "power" in solution. Likewise, ORP drops if it senses more reducing power in solution.

The exact value reported by an ORP electrode is, consequently, a constantly varying number that represents the ebb and flow of the battle. If you add oxidizers to the aquarium (ozone, permanganate, hydrogen peroxide, etc.) then the ORP rises. Alternatively, if you add a lot of organic molecules to the solution, or restrict the oxygen supply, the ORP drops.

What about pH? pH can impact the ORP readings in aquaria. Often, ORP goes down as pH rises. A typical aquarium ORP reading will change on the order of 59 mv/pH unit. The easiest way to understand this is to simply think of pH as a measure of hydrogen ions (H+) in solution, and to think of H+ as being on the side of the oxidizers. In reality, H+ doesn't usually oxidize things itself (though it can), but more typically it can hype up other oxidizers, like oxygen, making them much more potent. So during the course of a 24-hour day in a reef aquarium, ORP will vary as pH and O2 also vary.

Is ORP a useful measure? That is, should aquarists really care how this incredible battle is going? To some extent, yes. If the oxidizers carry the day, the ORP would rise to the point where the organic molecules that represent the bodies of organisms would be burned away. If the reducers won outright, the ORP would drop below 0 mv. In that case, there would be little oxygen left, and toxic hydrogen sulfide would rule the aquarium. In either case, the aquarium would be a disaster.

So aquarists have to hope for, and to some extent maintain, this battle in a sort of middle ground. That middle ground is typically described as being between 200 and 500 mv. Most aquarium authors have recommended a range of 300-450 mV. Why? Mostly because the ocean often has ORP in this range, and because these authors have successfully operated aquaria in this range.

HOWEVER, there is a significant potential to misunderstand cause and effect with ORP. If a crappy looking tank that is overrun by algae has a low ORP, is the low ORP the cause of the algae, or is the algae the cause of the low ORP? Or are both simply the byproduct of some other process? Does artificially raising ORP by adding an oxidizer like ozone actually improve anything? The answers are not obvious. These and other related questions will be addressed in greater detail in subsequent sections of this article that go into the scientific details surrounding ORP in aquaria.

Most reef aquarists, aside from those that use ozone and must therefore monitor ORP to prevent overdosing, use ORP to monitor if anything unusual happens in the aquarium. A sudden drop in ORP, for example, suggests that the reducers are suddenly gaining ground. That might be because a gush of organic molecules has been released from a dead organism, or because the oxygen supply is not keeping up with demand for some reason. Aquarists might use such information like an alarm suggesting the tank needs to be looked at closely. Most aquarists do not target any specific ORP value as being optimal, in part because ORP measurement is subject to considerable potential error.

So is ORP measurement and control recommended for nonscientists who also happen to be reef aquarists? My suggestion is no. There are interesting things to learn by measuring ORP, and I recommend that everyone with any interest read the following sections to better understand it and decide for themselves if it is worth doing or not. Nevertheless, I have not measured ORP in my aquarium for years, despite having the tools at hand. It is simply not very high on the list of things that one can usefully do to maintain a high quality reef aquarium, in my opinion."

__________________
Randy Holmes-Farley

Regards,
Kevin

[zhenya]

Thanks for posting that section, Kevin. I forgot all about that article, although I have it stored on my PC.

Leave it to Randy to describe an ORP as a battleground...
This man should be a general.

[DevonM]

Thanks for the post Kevin, a great way to explain ORP. I guess I like to monitor the battle from day-to-day, lol.

Since I have started to monitor my ORP (6 moths ago, or so) I have lost two fish, both times I was able to see the influx of "reducers" in the tank which led to an investigation. I found both fish which I felt had not been dead for too long. I guess I should also say that it's not that I am not paying attention to my tank but that it is sometimes difficult to see that a fish is missing in 300 gallons (for anyone wondering why I wouldn't notice a missing fish).

I cleaned my ORP monitor in vinegar last night and my readings dropped down from 365 to 320. I will continue to clean my monitor on a regular basis with vinegar. I will also continue to monitor the battle! Mainly focusing on irregular changes in the ORP value and not the actual number. Thanks guys!