hey bekko
I appreciate your post, its amazing how so amny people can interpret the same piece of information
everyone seems to think that I am hung up on the organics. I merely ask a question I think if you read my questions again I pretty much said the same thing as you that although there are anaerobes there are probably less in a bakki shower
"Last question ORP levels must be quite high in bakki shower systems at the biofilm/water interface. Is it ignorant to assume the majority of the biofilm is aerobic? and that with such high turnover top layers of the biofilm are removed and new layers are formed. As these new layers are exposed to water with high ORP there would be less chances of these anaerobic bacteria growing? And if they did they would probably be greatly outnumbered? thus in your scenario of these bacteria causing other pathogenic bacteria to proliferate would not be likely in a bakki shower/wet/dry filter pond. Since there are less anaerobic bacteria in a high ORP environment how is it that the organics decay and degas so effectively?"
I have to admit you made it sound so much better
"Thus, the bakki media will not work without the high flow, and the method as a whole will not work without the high water exchange rate."
First of all I just want to clarify something what do you mean by it will not work, ammonia and nitrite will not get converted? Nitrate will not get degassed? Organics will not be decayed or degassed? Or the koi will not grow? Or there is less appetite? Or there is less oxygen? Or the bakki showers alone produce a unfavourable environment for the kois health? Or the appearance of the koi suffers in terms of white on shiroji or the red on hi or the black on sumi.
I am not trying to be cheeky or a prick here but no one ever really says what it means that a bakki shower system alone will not work.
As to a high exchange rate what would you define as a high exchange rate? 10% a week 20% a week 30% a week. JR uses trickle towers and submerge filters ( If i remember correctly feel free to correct me if I am wrong), my question is how much water does he change a week. What systems do you run steve what amount of water do you change?
No one has run a bakki shower pond with the same fish load compared to a submerge system pond (same size, settlement chamber followed by biofiltration, same turnover rate lets say at 1.5times an hour) and measured the water parameters with the same amount of water change, except for mTTk and momotaro. What I am trying to get at is which system would produce the better water quality using the same amount of water change? We already know that nitrates would build up and so do organics, these will be diluted with the water change but depending on the rate of water change this may not be sufficient to maintain the same levels of organics and nitrates. In the bakki system the nitrates and organics would be degassed an advantage over the submerge system, and thus the build up of organics and nitrates may not happen or if it does happen will take longer. Which system would have higher growth rates (this has clearly been proven already), higher levels of oxygen, more healthy koi. Unless someone does an experiment like that I think its unfair to say that a bakki shower pond will not work without a high water change rate, especially when you cant give a figure for what the minimum amount of water change required to keep the koi healthy in a bakki shower pond compared to the submerge pond. Everyone just comments on momotaro 10% daily infusion just because they are open about it I never hear what volume other breeders put into their systems and find very few hobbyist posting whether they know how much water other breeders add in to their ponds.
(a) the quality of your incoming water
Even if I had the only option of using tap water that is hard, I would still use bakki shower over submerge filters as it reduces GH by a little (just a little
, I really don;t know how this works but it does). And all the other advantages.
(b) the cost of purchasing and pre-treating water for a higher exchange rate,
True if you are on a very very tight budget, you cant afford to pretreat water but then again home domestic ro units are not that expensive if you look around, many people probably spend more on koi in 1 year then the cost of a ro unit to run their pond
(c) the cost of pumping more water
That is true too bakki showers require higher turnover, more electricity it is just unfortunate that pumps like what are used in momotaro are not available everywhere. i would still rather have a 20 ton pond with bakki shower run at 1.5 times an hour with good source water that is soft than have a 30 ton pond with submerge filters and medium to hard water.
(d) the cost of overcoming the increased heat loss, then the BS may not be for you
A lot of people reduce this heat loss by putting sime polycarb sheets around their showers.
This is just my humble opinion, hope i didn't offend anyone
tewa