bakki towers

[James P]

Well, no one listens to JR but I'll say it again- Don't shoot the panio player!
Maeda runs these systems with a freshwater feed. The big pond is lightly stocked and, Maurice can verify this if he wants, I doubt the koi are kept in the other fish house in those crowded pond all year round? I'll be over there again in January and look forward to clearing up some questions that still linger in my mind. UNtil then I rely on guys like Maurice who were very early onto the concept. Doug, I didn't know you were running them?!
I don't think it is a matter of this report or that report. I think instead, it will be an body of information we accumulate from experiences in all countries and in all applications that will vet out the truth as to how realistic it is to run a bakki shower solo and exclusively in a closed system like a hobbyist back yard pond. JR

[MikeM]

There are so many positive reports on Bakki Showers that I'm getting convinced; BUT more than ever I think there has to be mechanical pre-filtration in most outdoor settings, simply because having leaves etc shredded through a pump and dumped on the media is not going to be a good thing.

I'm still waiting for further updates from SMG on her experiment.

Meanwhile, I got a kick out of a recent issue of Rinko where a new product called the "Minus Ion Ball" is touted by its inventor/manufacturer as being a ceramic airstone that emits far infrared rays and negative ions. Plus, later in the article it suggests these ceramic airstones also emit Radon rays [I always understood Radon to be a gas, so some translation problems perhaps]. It is recommended that one be used for each 2-5 tons in a pond and the result is increased disease resistance. In fact, ulcers can be cured by starting to use the Minus Ion Balls! ... the manufacturer says so.

In fact the manufacturer says his koi were always suffering from ulcers, thin bodies, nervousness "etc." until his invention of the Minus Ion Ball cured everything. No more problems. Plus, his fish grow faster and even though he could not win at shows before, he has won 2 GCs at Gifu prefecture shows since using his invention. WOW. From constant illness and ulcers to 2 GCs! Must be true ... it's in Rinko!

Guess I'm just going to have to re-learn everything I ever thought I knew about fishkeeping. Need to study FIR, moonbeams and pixie dust. ... although I am wondering if the guy just needed some aeration?

[shiromujigirl]

Ladies and Germs, after going off to the mountains for 10 days and changing or overflowing no water in the Bakki sShower experiments, the water clarity......... OK Dougleezz you have got me in a mood......... sucketh.

Conventionally filtered ponds are clear as bells.

[Doug Ward]

Yepp it do....
Hi SMG........ :twisted:

[dick benbow]

My outside pond is running with a bakki tower 3 stacker and bio balls.
I used a few bags of aged media on the top tray to bleed thru the new unused media . The water is trying to clear but will probably be another 4 weeks befoere it snaps in. I'm using a bead filter that is backwashed every three days in front of it. I am also running a pencil thickness of new water in 24/7.

The inside pond is really nice. I added the BH material in a three stacker in addition to my trickle filter and j-mat ( 3 of em) vortexes. all drained each day with water in and out 24/7 pencil thickness.

So what I'm doing pretty much lines up with what doug and melissa are recommending.

the only thing I still cannot put my finger on is since I've added the bh filter the koi's activity and appetite is heighjtened. My j-mat is state of the art and literally boiling with air. the trickle tower degassed before the bh.
nothing ever showed on my water checks. the koi were always healthy.
I have been a proponent of the 24 /7 trickle in exchange and vorterx drainer on a daily basis for years, so I'm not about to change. The outside pond is lightly stocked and the inside way too crowded to suit my tastes.

For me, the bh has added something in the inside pond and I will retain it.
Time will tell on the outside one. Always before I would run multiple filters using different methods and media combined. never all my eggs in one basket. The only thing I tried and discarded was k-1. The water was good to start with and I could see that it added anything.

[Mike T]

Aloha from Hawaii:

Had three objectives when I bought and installed a stack of 4 Blue Bins from Steve Castel filled with 20 kilos of BH media from John Sprinkle TBT of Twigs...

1. Improved water quality... Our ORP reading had topped out at the 350-370 and wanted to get it over 400.

2. Add a cooling tower for the hot summer months...and

3. Install a maintenance free bio filter to lessen my wife's work load...

Well, this morning after 7 weeks in service the ORP passed 400 to 404...Just cleaned the probe 3 days ago so I know it's clean and not reading high...(Was in the 390s all last week)

The August Heat Wave was early this year with temperatures at 90-91 degrees all of last week...Water Temperature, during the week, was a constant 74-76 depending on time of day...

Now I have to wait a few years to see if the media will clean itself as Maeda san claims...

All in all, I think the investment has already paid for itself...

A few notes: Water is pumped directly from the inner chamber of a Savio Skimmer filter @ 1000 gph to the Bakki Type filter...

Pond is 900 gallons so am only getting 1 turn/hr...

Fish load is 7 Koi, 4, 24+" ~ 2, 15+" and 1, 10" Koi...

An Aquadyne 1.1 BF is used as a mechanical filter feeding a 7 cuft TT and backwashed every Mon. Wed. and Friday...

All tests results for bad stuff is at Zero...

Aloha! Mike

[swordfish]

Bakki shower is not available in my country yet. I would certainly like
to use it for my main pond once it is available here.
Currently I'm using a DIY Trickle Tower with 600 bio balls for my 100gal FG quarantine/medicine tank. Been using it for a week now but nitrate
is still at 40ppm same as before I put up the TT. Anybody know how
long it takes for the TT to go into effect?

SF

[Mike T]

Can take 4-6 weeks depending on various parameters of your pond...I saw positive results after 4 weeks with our TT using 7 cuft of Ultima II bio media in a 70 gallon blue plastic barrel...It took 6 weeks before I saw any results with the bakki type shower using bacteria house media...

Go to www.pondpetsusa.com to see what the Ultima media looks like...

You can make your own Bakki type bins and fill them with bio balls and probably get similar results...John Sprinkle of Twig, told me that he used the commercial silverware trays which are used to wash the silverware in restaurants...you fill the first tray with your bio media, place an empty one on top of it, you continue alternating the filled and empty trays until you're satisfied that you have enough media for the water to flow through...

Aloha! Mike

[James P]

Mike M, I feel I wear some Teflon armor here as I have used TTs for a decade now so it should buy me some credibility?
There are many positive results reported as would be expected when adding on TT or wet/dry filtration. It adds a dimension to ponds that may have not existed before hand.
But these reports are all relative. They are relative to where you started from. In the other parish they are moving out of BBs and into wet/drys! OF COURSE they will see dramatic improvement.
What I want to see is a body of knowledge based on the Maeda application- no prefiltration/ raw water and only Bakki showers. Now that will be interesting. And if it works after four seasons that will be revolutionary. The rest is just the koi community catching up to what Japan, the aquaculture industry, the aquarium community and a few advanced koi hobbyists already knew. JR

[shiromujigirl]

Thats what I want to see too, a pure Bakki Shower system with no prefilter or other filter as Mr. Maeda does it. It sounds like most of you all are using other additional filters.

It looks like to me that if I don't manitain a large water change or flush through the clarity in this test goes bad. Come to think of it, ANY kind of filtered pond will look good with that kind of flush through, possibly even if it didn't have a filter at all.