[butterfly]

Quote: Originally Posted by junglegeorge12 dtbh, have you considered checking other concerns as causes of the high nitrate and nitrite readings? ie a pile of poo or old food collected and rotting somewhere in the system or in the old conventional filter media. I have seen medias impacted from old food that were like nitrate factories. I have also seen plants cause the same problem. Do you have alot of plants? If so what do the roots look like? Is there a possibility of a alot of leaves rotting away in the water? The reason I ask is that my nitrate reading went from 10ppm to 0 within 3 weeks of switching over. Also, how high is your shower, and how many of them are you using at what flow rate per set? You may need to completely clean out the old fiter and wash or change the media. Also, have you checked the nitrate and nitrite adn water conditions of your incoming water as a potential problem? Especially changing 10% daily. Just your water changes should have dropped the nitrate off the chart, so I think you have another unadressed problem.

I have a pond about the same size (I think one ton is 1000 liter???) with a much higher fish load. I have a very simple system (w/o Bakke etc.) and I do not have any problem maintaining the pond.

Dtbh's system has low fish load, therefore, Bakke shower is not really needed and experimental comparison with other filter systems at a meaningful/scientific level is not possible.

Without looking at his system, it appears to me that he needs more plants in his pond to absorb nitrate. Even though he is changing 10% water, production of nitrate in the same period of time is offsetting the water change. Without plant or chemcal means, nitrate would not go down. well, some bacteria can also reduce nitrate.