| hi guys
tewa here in australia. i want to firstly say that I have never been to momotaro farm and have not seen the showers in action yet. I am planning on going sometime this year, this is purely because in Australia we can't import kois so there is not much reason for visiting the koi farm besides learning more about the hobby from the best.
i first started with a small bakki shower setup with bioballs for about 6 weeks whilst waiting for my bacteria house to arrive. This setup was indoors and the amount of bioload should have easily handled the bioload. I could never get the nitrite to zero as well. Maybe bioballs take a lot longer to fully cycle. When I added the bacteria house just 15kg the kois were much more active after only two days this is evident by their feeding and how much they wim around besides being in even colder temperature than when the bioballs were in.
After three weeks I had no more docs on the surface but still had nitrite in the water by the fourth week there was no nitrite left. I do a water change of about 20% every three days. I probably wouldn't have to do as much if I didn't feed as much. I was trying to figure out the digestive rate of the new momotaro all season koi food. I continued to feed various amounts even when the temperature got to 11 degrees these feeds ranged from 1 to 3% of body weight. At 11 degrees I was feeding 1% body weight and found that there was very little to no waste at all. And feeding at 1.2% pushed the limits of the digestive system and undigested solid waste became evident.
I use to have very dark brown algae growing on the walls of the pond (when there was a bio ball shower) but after two weeks of using the bakki showers I begin to see very bright green algae growing just on the walls. Now they have totally replaced the dark brown algae.
I will post pics of my other setup when it is finished probably in a month's time
tewa |