| I do not presently use any autofill devices on our ponds or our swimming pool. This is a very wet climate here in Charleston, West Virginia, USA, so our swimming pool gets its "autofill" from the sky.
We have two main koi ponds. One is more or less "normal", outside, 3800 gallons of pond itself, outside, but then has 1700 gallons of water in the filter system which maintains a high stocking density of very large koi. The regular daily mechanical filter system purges do require daily water additions, this refilling of water could be automated with your device for test purposes. The water supply is "more or less normal" city water, with significant chlorine content, and I do have very good test devices for measurement of chlorine levels that could be used to test the device for chlorine removal versus test conditons. By the way, the city water frequently has high phosphate level, but that is another story, and I doubt any refill device can remove phosphates, which drive algae wild on occasion.
The other koi pond is inside the house in our basement. It is also about 3800 gallons, and also has a large well maintained filter system. For this pond, the mechanical filter cleanouts are weekly instead of daily, but again the refill could be automated for test purposes. I doubt you would want to test the device on this pond, since it is so unusual to have a koi pond inside a house, not many folks would find that data of real interest. Presently, however, all the koi are in this indoor pond for the Winter, the outside pond was drained for this winter to make some modifications to the plumbing (no koi pond is ever perfect!).
A coating of green algae on the pond walls is desirable for the health of koi in an outside koi pond. I don't see why or how the quality of refill water would make any difference in this desirable algae growth.
I keep our swimming pool highly chlorinated at 5 to 10 ppm chlorine content, and also add the standard algaecides routinely. So I do not have an algae problem in the swimming pool, although even with the chlorine and the algaecide, some algae does grow on the sides of the swimming pool in the middle of summer.
It is not clear to me yet what would be tested when testing the device, other than how much UV light, length of tubing, and flow rate conditions are required in a fill function to destroy normal city water chlorine content.
The outside koi pond has tremendous aeration in two large trickle tower filters. So the oxygen content is already high.
Write back and let's figure out whether any kind of test makes good sense. |