K1

[jjkon]

Thanks Dick and Gazza for the information.



John

[swordfish]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow John,

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow Lots of things affect it's ability including square or round filter tubs used.

Dick,

How does square or round filter tubs affect it ability? Kindly enlighten me as I most probably would use a rectangle FG tub.

SF

[swordfish]

Gazza,

Thanks for explaining. You are right. Its alot easier to see all those debris & waste getting by this way.
I'm planing to fill up mine with K1 so would not have any space left to see how many DOC get by.

SF

[GazKoi]

Swordfish,

I have about 50-60lts of K1 in my vortex and that does the job fine and it is very handy having the reservoir and i still can not believe that ever time i look there is no waste getting by and i have messed about big time to see what happens with this system.

I have even brushed the back wall of the pond down and broken off blanket weed and pushed it towards the drain so that it will have more work than usual to do and still it stays clear

So far so good and the water quality has unproved and i thought is was good before

[swordfish]

Gazza,

May I ask 50-60L of K1 is enough for your pond of what volume?

SF

[GazKoi]

Of course you may ask no problem as away


The 50-60lts of K1 is just for fines removal the pond is 4500gls(UK) i have 4 vortex units all coupled together with the twin 4" pipes that you see in an earlier picture one has 3 boxes of BHM in it one has 140lts of K1 in it and the last one has a matting cartridge in it.

If you like i will try to sort out some pictures for you when i get back later.

[kiky]

Swordfish,
My K1 took almost a year to mature! During these 12 months, the water will got clear for a month, only to become green for two months before getting clear again - and the cyles went on and on.

Of course I spent the first two months doing trial and error, since I started from scratch with zero knowledge about K1 at the time. Fortunately with the helps of Maurice, DickB, MikeM and the likes in this forum, I finally managed to sort things out.

Each of my chamber has about 0.5 ton capacity, and I put 200 ltrs of K1 in each. In my experience, air has to be strong enough as to be able to move the K1 all the time. Less air sometimes make some K1 to stand still for a few seconds before moving again. Also, it is difficult to have uniform air coming out of the air ring if it is 'just' enough. So in my case I really supply 'strong' air. But I have no idea how strong is 'too much' air as meant by DickB.

Hope this information help.

[mike]

kiky, to produce "strong" enough air for your 200 litres of k1. how many lpm of air do you pump in?

[kiky]

Aragorn, I am not that technical, so I don't know lpm. But I am using two 190 watts of Hiblows for the 6 chambers, each Hiblow supplying air to 3 chambers.

[Arthur]

These are two very different things: the first is a mechanical filter and the second is biological.

I have seen excellent results with K-1 in mechanical filtration and intend to install such system shortly.

As for moving K-1 bio-filtration one must understand how it works to understand the advantages and disadvantages. I have used such systems for almost two years now and have made interesting observations.

The K-1 moving in the chamber's water up and down indirectly increases the filters dwell time by increasing the contact opportunities between the bacteria and the water molecules.

Moving K-1 constantly hit one another, shedding off old/dead biofilm sections, thus exposing to the water the younger and more active bacteria, increasing the efficiency of such filter system compared to a static J-mat.

Moving K-1 has some drawbacks however:
1) because of the mechanical rejuvination of the biofilm, it is much thinner and more exposed to the environment and is affected by water treatments more readily that the J-mat biofilm;
2) for the same reasons, a K-1 bio-filter that is starved of nutrient for a period of time resumes full function much slower than a J-mat biofilm. Let's take a real life example: you leave for a week vacation and do not trust anybody feeding your precious collection in your absence, you return from vacation and in your excitement resume feeding your fish as if nothing happened; with K-1-only system there will be ammonia and nitrite spikes. In fact more nitrite that ammonia. Why I really do not know but maybe the mechanical knocking of the biofilm sheds off more nitrite-loving bacteria that ammonia-loving bacteria in a starved environment. Maybe JR, with his knowledge of biofilms can explain this.

This also explains why a K-1 only system recovers slower than a J-mat biofilter after Winter in a non-heated system.

I recommend a combination biofilter of J-mat for stability and K-1 for its effectiveness during the high feeding season.