bakki with bio balls

[dick benbow]

Well my experiment is over with my filtration 3 stacker bakki tower filled with bioballs. It's been two months and the bacteria is established. I had to add a UV light to get clarity. 3 adult koi over 24" and three under 12 " is the bio "load" in 4,000 U.S. Gals.
I could never get the nitrite readings where I wanted by itself. I have since added a BB filter which i backwash weekly and use a bacteria
(bio-lift) to keep water quality exactly where I want it.

My conclusion is this combination does not work. my inside pond I have a three stacker with bacteria house media with conventional jap mat/vortexes on it as well, water is clear no need for UV and parameters are perfect.( 3-koi over 24 " and a 14", in 2,000 gals) I feed heavier because one of my asagi's is a growing 2 year old.


what nitrite says to me is that my pond was underfiltered or over
stocked, neither of which is the case. I feed Hikari staple and wheatgerm mix and am not a heavy feeder.

What I learned was that substituting media may make a difference as to performance. since I discount any contributiuon of( biological) filtration other than physical to the Bubblebead, I like the idea of a different bio filter in combination with the bakki tower.

filtration to me, whether you use k-1, blue j-mat, is heightened with the use of a trickle tower or bakki tower because of the oxygenation and degassing effect that it contributes in addition to biological filtration.

My recommendation is to combine types of filtration and to strive for more filtartion than could ever be expected to be needed.

hope this info and opinion may help some readers who are struggling with
their current system or planning a new pond. Just remember for cool/cold climates unprotected bakki towers and trickle towers are water chillers and will rapidly cool your water as temps fall. You will need a heater or means of protecting or insulation ( without affecting the degassing effect)
with these two forms of bio filtration.

I do know of one dealer in S. california that I repect who has heavy stocked Ponds with a 4 stacker with bio balls and is perfectly happy with the results, hence my repeat of the word opinion.

[Bob Winkler]

Thnx for the honest reply Dick. I have a BS type filter as an addition to vortex's and nexus both. Having been only on for a few weeks, I can't say much about it as a stand alone filter, but since the addition two things have happened.

One: within a few days, the koi stopped gulping at the surface and "breaching". I think this behavior has much to do with gas supersaturation via diffuser drains ala Maurice's opinion which has been remedied by the degassing effect of the BS.

Two: I had ALOT of DOC's for this past few weeks. No other changes were made in this 4 year old pond other than the addition of the BS. It is getting better now, but wasnt sure what to make of that.

[Bob Hart]

Dick,

Really interested to see your results. My Bakki is a 3-tier version and it had 10 litres of BHM in each tier. Not having a lot of cash to splash at the moment, I moved the 10 litres from the bottom tier and put into the top two tiers. I filled the bottom tier with bac balls!

This was only a month or so ago and the DOC is still on the pond. Thought the 'extra' bio filtration may have helped here.

As this Bakki is only part of my filtration, perhaps not an idea test using the Bac balls. I'll have to dig deep, or try something else - Lava Rock???

[GazKoi]

Hi Bob

There must be something else than can work in the Bakki systems has anybody tried k1 this like plenty of air.

Just a questions for you geniuses.

Gazza

[Bob Winkler]

Hi Gaz,

There are plenty of TT's out there for years with other media than BH, including K1 in them that work well. Any media will work. It is just which is best? Tough to measure that one. :shock:

[GazKoi]

BHM seems to be the one Bob.

Cheers

Gazza

[tewa]

hi guys

tewa here in australia. i want to firstly say that I have never been to momotaro farm and have not seen the showers in action yet. I am planning on going sometime this year, this is purely because in Australia we can't import kois so there is not much reason for visiting the koi farm besides learning more about the hobby from the best.

i first started with a small bakki shower setup with bioballs for about 6 weeks whilst waiting for my bacteria house to arrive. This setup was indoors and the amount of bioload should have easily handled the bioload. I could never get the nitrite to zero as well. Maybe bioballs take a lot longer to fully cycle. When I added the bacteria house just 15kg the kois were much more active after only two days this is evident by their feeding and how much they wim around besides being in even colder temperature than when the bioballs were in.

After three weeks I had no more docs on the surface but still had nitrite in the water by the fourth week there was no nitrite left. I do a water change of about 20% every three days. I probably wouldn't have to do as much if I didn't feed as much. I was trying to figure out the digestive rate of the new momotaro all season koi food. I continued to feed various amounts even when the temperature got to 11 degrees these feeds ranged from 1 to 3% of body weight. At 11 degrees I was feeding 1% body weight and found that there was very little to no waste at all. And feeding at 1.2% pushed the limits of the digestive system and undigested solid waste became evident.

I use to have very dark brown algae growing on the walls of the pond (when there was a bio ball shower) but after two weeks of using the bakki showers I begin to see very bright green algae growing just on the walls. Now they have totally replaced the dark brown algae.

I will post pics of my other setup when it is finished probably in a month's time

tewa

[dick benbow]

Good Stuff, thank you for sharing your information with us! This kind of feed back helps us to get a handle on things and confirms much of what i had suspected. Pls do keep us informed!

[Bob Hart]

Great post Tewa, as Dick says, this is just the info we all need.

If you have any other ponds, could you try the Bio balls for longer and see if it would reduce the Nitrites eventually?

It does seem though, that BHM kicks in quickly.

[GazKoi]

I wonder how good the bac balls would be in a trickle tower on a skimmer circuit obviously not as good as BHM but still is some kind of filtration.

I do think it is good to have some different types of media to help out all the goody bacteria and gives it a choice what do you all think?

Gazza