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Dick
No prolem will let you guys know how its going probably the most exciting bit is to see whether we can find similar growth rates here in Australia when using exactly the same kind of water, food and filtration.
Bob
Right now I don't have a spare pond but I might later on, one thing I did discover about the bioballs when I took it out was that there were a lot of fish waste, large chunks stuck inside the bioball and if you put it in submerged water they would come out. This was evident in every shelf, which could be a reason for why the nitrites were still hanging around as the fish waste just wasn't broken down into smaller pieces fast enough for the bacteria to consume.
I took out the bacteria house yesterday to have a look at whether the same thing was occuring. There were only large pieces on the very top of the first layer of bacteria house in the first shelf, there was no large chunks in the other shelves. This leads me to believe that the type of surface is very important, if no settlement was to be used and fed from bottom drain the media that must be used has to have a very rough and rugged surface.
those who have bacteria house will all attest that if the skin was to graze the media very lightly that you would feel the sharpness of the coral like media. This along with fish waste being soft and the shearing forces of large water volume flow would grind the fish waste to smaller pieces.
This is why i strongly believe that if to be used in an outdoor system that leaves and other debri must be taken out by something before dirty water is pumped over the showers. Fish waste is the same whether indoor or outdoor pond. I also believe that this is where the system can be abused and seen as a fraud and that it does not work. When the hobbyist overfeeds beyond the shower capacity (bottom drain fed pond) then they are bound to hit a boundary where the digestive system of the koi cannot digest the amount of food consume. This leads to a lot of fish waste in the actual water itself before it even gets to the showers. At this point onlookers will only see that the water clarity is bad and that there is a lot of fish waste and thus the system doesn't work. At this point one thing to do is to increase the turnover rate so that the fish waste does get to the shower and not stay in the pond that long but there is only so much filtration whether it be biofiltration or mechanical (which I consider in bacteria house instance to be the breaking down of fish waste to smaller particles at the top shelf) if people overfeed pass the filtration capacity with inadequate turnover rates then the unbroken down fish waste would travel back into the pond as small particles and effect water clarity.
That is why daisuke told me that they would turnover their pond volume 2 to 3 times and use 300kg of bacteria house for their ten tonne pond. Simply because of the extreme stocking rate and also feeding rate.
tewa
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