Corals and cockle shells...

[scorpio168]

Hi,

Anyone knows how much Corals and Cockle Shells use to buffer the PH of a 68 ton pond?

Thanx~

[dick benbow]

Most of those who need to do some buffering put in as much as they can
in a filter flow thru situation. The water takes from the shells what it needs after while the shells get thin and break and you know it's time for a refill. If none is needed, the water leaves it alone and does not draw from it!

[Arthur]

If you water source is soft, normal water changes will not be sufficient to maintain the alkalinity required for optimum operation of the biofilter (thus always risking a pH crach and the death of the filter). This is of course dependent on your fish load and the amount of waste to process (but usually I find most ponds are overloaded).

So, ensuring enough carbonate alkalinity is available in the pond water is important. My preferred method is using crushed oyster shells (the ones used to provide calcium for chiken, it is clean of organic matter and safe). Crushed coral is also good but disolves faster, thus changing the pH faster (that fish do not like).

Place the crushed oyster shells in a mesh bag where there is a flow of water. Be sure to shake or twist the bag weekly to prevent stacking and channeling.

The acid produced by the nitrification process of the biofilter will naturally disolve the oyster shell (calcium carbonate) to the extent needed to maintain the pond's alkalinity.

Arthur

[dick benbow]

Arthur? I hope this is the Arthur I think it is! If so I'm glad to see you posting.
I was always afraid that since you sit in front of a computer all day with only a few breaks for koi feeding and maintenance that you might want to do other things on your free time!

[Arthur]

Yes, it is I Dick. Hoping to get over all that computer time is to automate things a bit more and give me more time for things I really want to do.

[dick benbow]

It's great to have you as a resource here on the board.

I had to laugh at how un-presuming your avitar is. No one would know what
respect to give your input, but I'm spilling the beans!

Folks...you'd like this guy personally and he's no slouch in the knowledge department either!


Welcome Arthur!

[Arthur]

OK Dick, so how do you like this avatar (my favorite koi variety - I am still in search of the perfect one).

Sorry my favorite has no narumi in it :-)

However, when I can afford what I want, I will buy one from Hosokai, or a reverse from Otsuka. Or maybe one of your production.

[dick benbow]

I do like your avitar. and finding a good tancho sanke can take awhile. one of these days i need to take a picture of my asagi and use it instead of the showa.
kinda giving the wrong message.

One of the things i need to do is get my GH down to accomodate my new love.

Any recommendations on how to accomplish that fairly inexpensively?

[Arthur]

Putting things into the water is always less expensive than taking things out.

This being established, in your situation I would look into water demineralization using rechargeable ion-exchange resins. This is what laboratories use (instead of distilled water) because it is relatively cheap and can be produced very quickly in large quantity.

A very small system will produce 5gpm easily.

Also there is no waste as with RO.

The beauty is that you can build such a system yourself to save some $$$.