Using Ozone as a healthier solution for disinfection helps protect aquarium animals from the irritation often associated with more traditional chemical treatment. Daly Middle East were commissioned to provide a solution to help maintain a safe environment within the Dubai Aquarium’s plant room.
The Dubai Aquarium had three Ozonia CFS 7 ozone generators located on the roof of the mall, disinfecting its water supply to protect the different species in its care from infection due to water-borne virus and disease. These were running as duty/duty/standby — Duty 1 for the main display plant room located adjacent to the ozone plant room, and Duty 2 for the backwash recovery and seawater make-up system located in the basement of Dubai Mall. The stainless steel pipework running from the ozone plant room to the basement passes through a number of work spaces adjacent to public areas, and was starting to show signs of pitting and corrosion.
The proposal was for the rooftop ozone generators to become duty/standby/standby for the main display system, with a new, smaller ozone generator installed — together with associated controls and pipework — to handle ozone demand from the reclamation and make-up system, rather than running additional pipework to the roof generators. Installing an additional ozone generator, together with a gas detection system monitoring ambient ozone levels, allowed Dubai Mall Aquarium to continue operating at optimal health and safety standards with improved detection coverage.
Why Ozone Is Used for Aquarium Water Treatment
Public aquariums face a problem most water treatment doesn’t: the disinfectant has to be strong enough to control pathogens in a large, continuously recirculating system, while being safe for the marine life the system exists to support. Traditional chlorine-based disinfection can leave residuals that irritate sensitive species and complicate water chemistry, and dosing has to be managed carefully to avoid harming the animals it’s meant to protect.
Ozone (O₃) sidesteps much of that trade-off. It’s one of the most powerful oxidizers available for water treatment, effective against bacteria, viruses, and protozoa, and it breaks back down into oxygen shortly after reacting — it doesn’t leave the kind of persistent chemical residual that chlorine-based treatment does. That’s exactly why it’s a standard choice for aquariums, public aquatic facilities, and other applications where water quality has to be both very high and biologically safe.
The trade-off is that ozone itself is also hazardous in gaseous form at high enough concentrations, which is why ozone generator plant rooms need proper gas detection and monitoring — as in this installation — rather than just disinfection equipment on its own.
Specifying Ozone Disinfection for Water Treatment Applications
Projects like this usually come down to three practical questions: what’s the realistic capacity needed across duty and standby units so the system has genuine redundancy, not just a single point of failure labelled “backup”; how will the pipework route be protected against the corrosion this installation ran into, especially where it passes through occupied or public-facing spaces; and is gas detection specified as part of the system from day one, rather than added retroactively once ozone plant rooms are already in service.
Daly Middle East supplies UV and ozone water treatment systems across the UAE and GCC, and can help design and specify disinfection systems for aquariums, pools, and other sensitive water treatment applications.