Removing Hydrocarbon Oils

[JMBoehling]

Randy,

I made a rather large mistake approx 8 months ago and used
Oatey Plumbers Putty to fill a leak in my bulheads of my Megaflow system. I removed the putty about 2 weeks ago after realizing the toxicity and have been doing aggresive water changes (20 gallons every 4 days) and changing out carbon in my fluidized filter with every change.

I notice that with every WC my SPS polyps come out like crazy, but over thr course of two days retract to being almost undetectable.

The putty was made out of 60% Limestone and 30 % Hydrocarbon Oils. Is there a better way of removing the residual toxins from my water column.

Here are my water parameters just tested today:

Salinity Alk (Meq/l)PH PO4 Calcium Mag

1.025 3.31 8.2 0 410 1500


Thanks,
Jim

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

GAC (carbon) would be ideal for that purpose.

 

[jdieck]

Rady, can Ozone and/or skimming help in this case also?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, skimming will help as long as there is other organic stuff being skimmed out. Ozone may or may not help much for a pure hydrocarbon. It is rather selective for certain functional groups, like carbon carbon double bonds. For example, the C=C in the middle of the fatty acid molecule oleic acid is broken by ozone, but the remainder of the molecule is largely untouched in normal ozone use.

 

[jdieck]

Got it. Thanks :thumbsup: