BHM - Why?

[StuW]

As i said before I'd like to get hold of some of the feather rock people use in the states with good results. I don't think grog or lava rock would be as good as they are so uneven that waste could collect in them. That doesn't happen as much with the fairly smooth profiled BHM.Ed

eds
Great White Shark

This is why i believe flow rate is the main factor, with both AJ and my systems the flow rate is such that no crap builds up on the media and as long as its saturated and pretty porous I question if the size of the fissures is that big a deal as the bacteria we are talking about are so small they are not going to be hindered too much in reproduction.
Having experience with lava rock bio crystal and blagdon media with excellent results I am loath to change with the price of BHM. I wish we had more experience from people running showers with huge turn overs and a multitude of media

[eds]

Have sent an e-mail off to a company that sell large peices of pumice in 25kg bags or m3 bulk bags so see what response, if anything, I get.

Edit: forgot to add the link! http://www.techfil.co.uk/Products/Pumic ... _Lumps/100

Stu I've got proper BHM in my QT filter running without mechanical filtration and I still get some build of detritus in the trays with that so I am sure small, uneven peices of any natural rock would be far worse. In my new main pond I'm going to have a sieve before the shower so hoping it won't be so critical. I bought some grog to try in the shower running at the moment and when I saw how small, uneven and heavy it was I changed my mind! Forgot to say the flow rate is 12,000lph split between two plastic box towers, about 40cm by 30cm each.

I've been tempted with the Crystal Bio but it still seems quite expensive looks like it is smaller and will pack in a bit closer so more likely to trap any waste. And then I think well why not just buy BHM which I know works brilliantly?!

[Gazza]

Hi Guys,

I have messed about with other media before and grog in my old "bin" and it defiantly catches the crap as i see it all build up so went straight in the bin

I have not tries Crystal Bio but know of someone who did and removed it and replaced with BHM and he said it had worn down and held crap as well.

[tomy2ponds]

Hi I think Bob will remember I brought a Maurice Cox TT off him a few years ago first off I filled it with Back Balls worked ok but a couple of years ago I was given a load of alpha grog so gave this a go it works very very well when feeding heavily in the summer my parameters stay spot on with the Back Balls I would sometimes get a 0.25 nitrite reading.I have never used Baki media but I seem to remember seeing Bobs when he took it out of the tower and it was covered in muck,Is my memory still working Bob ???

[greg]

Duncan,

First up sorry for the tardy reply. Time to read over the weekend but no time to sit a type a considered reply.

I mean no disrespect here, but by your own photos backed up on my article on Japanese matting, for your experience with Jmat a chamber full of breeze blocks would have been an improvement,, That was just a giant rickdon crap trap that her designed for you and many other, so with all due respect you cant really compare what you had to BHM and showers along side other folks who get/got Japanese matting filtration right!
what I’m saying is you were a world apart from a proper Japanese mat cartridge so you cant really judge Japanese matting to BHM and if you had done it right you may not have seen such a dramatic change. When you do scientific studies you7 have to take in all the angles and I submit had you properly configured Japanese matting set up the differerence would have been slight if any

Utterly agree - the hassle that the Japanese Matting caused me due to the way it was set up was huge and was no doubt a factor in why i just wanted to rip it out and try something else. Fortunately i hope to have the opportunity to see if your words above are right due to a friend in the hobby is planning to re-configure his Japanese Matting chamber in the spring from the exact same way i had it to the way you mention in your thread on the main section.

next
While there are a bazillion types of pathogenic bacteria out there many not mapped, the ones in a filter are simple and few and have been mapped, these are called chemotrophs . Put simple they require a chemical food source namely Nitrogen AND that’s all! The other bacteria in filters are heterotrophs which require carbon (organics ). Heterotrophs are responsible for the digestion of debris in your filter down to a fine mulm. They also produce a toxin from their digestion process that inhibits blanket weed growth, so need to be encouraged. You would not retain heterotrophs in a filter at that flow rate and that configuration because they don’t form a film or matrix as do chemotrophs , which is probably why I have yet to see a crystal clear showered pond that is managed how it was intended no settlement prior to the shower.

OK - Here is where i'm slighty confused! Whenever i hear / read about filter bacteria i tend to hear the terms (Anaerobic and Aerobic) and also (Nitrobacter and Nitrosomonas). I have never heard the two types you mention above. Interesting point about crystal clear water and showers as based upon your words above i am running a shower / filter media configuration now that is based pretty much an ideal with a 14ft settlement then into K1 (200lts approx) and then over the 3 teir shower. I can easily turn the water green by knocking off the UV but i get very little in terms of bits in the water.

Folks cant generalize based on what they think they know, about bacteria, i'll give you a current example:
you may have read about a site copying my article over on bio films, well I got that removed but what followed got even worse, it became a free for all on posting information copied form elsewhere with no understanding of what it was about other than it appeared to have the right words contained in it.. My article was removed then I noticed one below by flemming this joker just copied and pasted some research labs work and that was removed , but that’s another story. But then along comes a guy with the call sign Jurgen a mod to boot, with some you tube clips on reproduction of bacteria then he says “Bacteria are responsible for the Bio-film so lets see how fast those little thingies can actually multiply” . well the first one shows e-coli or something very similar spitting every 10 to 20 minutes or so which is nothing to do with bio-films. Next he shows the slower bacteria of a bio-film taking much longer about 10 hours to saturate a plate, but he made one mistake! these bacteria were feeding on saliva, so these were chemoorganotrophs rather than the inorganic chemolithotrophs found in our filters which can take 24 hours to split through to a week to no split at all it depends on conditions . so this film shows around 13 CFU’s spreading exponentially to full and massive over saturation of the slide so anyone watching this would think that’s how it works where as in reality chemolithotrophs would take 24 hours to split to days in the wrong conditions, so at best after 24 hours if this example where the right bacteria after 24 hours at elast and not 10 hours those 13 CFU’s would have become 26 and not a whole saturated plate, this guy had put his chest out but was about as far from reality as you could get.

So are you saying here that given the right conditions a certain set of filter bacteria will establish in a set amount of time? - Another point then - So the potions and lotions we see advertised as "Filter boosters" etc are really doing nowt and that the filter would take "X" amount of time to come on-line regardless as without the right conditions the bacteria will not multiply from the bottle and if you have the right conditions then you don't need the bottle anyway?

Second “dwell time” I believe dwell time is a guide so folks will centre on getting their filters the right size for the pond with a reasonable flow rate to keep them on the right path and has little to do with chemical exchange with filter bacteria. The thought that nutrients the chemolithotrophs need to survive and thrive has to be near stationary for them to be able to feed is mad, the thought that nutrients needed are racing by in a high speed flow rate, justifies there being a different set of bugs at work , is ludicrous they are the same bugs
This is not like a kid chasing a milk float to grab a bottle of milk, if he aint fast enough he aint gonna get a drink! Its simple the food source is in the water the food source is saturated molecule to molecule then the water is in contact with the bacteria. That’s it that’s all there is:

Hmm - i don't understand this bit. Surely the dwell time is dependant on the type of filter your using? If you've got big chamber filters and they are 30% of your ponds volume the dwell time is going to be huge compared to a sieve and TT / Shower. I can appreciate that the Amm - Nitrite - Nitrate conversion by the bacteria is almost instant so its not the dwell time that's important to the conversion. But... differing water conditions must mean differing bacteria (if there are millions of them). How else would the Anoxic type filter work? - or am i missing the point? - Confused.

Please don’t take this the wrong way I’m trying to make a point I’m not for or against them but lets call it like it is. They work but no better than anything else configured correctly.Would I pay the price for it? Not on your life! But if it came down to the picking between a Nexus and BHM shower I would choose the shower, and if that choice came to a shower of Japanese matting I would choose the matting .

Not to worry - not taken the wrong way. Just nobody can explain why showers / BHM work (maybe irrespective of media). The cost is huge and this is why i cannot afford a new one and sourced a 2nd hand one from a place i could trust. I find the issue a strange one as nobody ever seems to question that a Nexus should have K1, Bead Filters should have beads - but when it comes to Showers that they should have BHM - there seems to be a debate.

Now the conclusion that i can come to is - like any other filter set up correctly it works, but set up wrongly it will not. Just maybe the mechanics are easier and simpler on a shower. I dunno just maybe its all about opinion like a lot of this hobby.

[carlejo]

A very experienced koi keeper friend of mine help me set up my system, 4 years ago.

Pond is 4200g and I wanted help with flow rates, etc and eventually went with a sequence 11,000, pumping approx 2450gph.... so giving roughly 2000gph after restrictions, etc.... bear with me.

This by the old addage of turning over your pond once every 2 hours seemed ok for what I had and I was pleased with the way it was setup.

Approx 2 years ago, after a visit to his pond he was tinkering with 'upping' his turnover rates. He was trying to get closer to BHM shower turnover rates as he/and others believed that whatever the filter media 'missed' on the first run would then be caught on the next, and so on. His system is a multichamber filter, mine is a vortex system.

This I think is the main reason why BHM systems work, flow rates.

I have a TT filled with 10kg of BHM, prefiltered with a compact sieve.......I use a sequence 11,000 for this also and it's fed directly from my skimmer. All I know is it works, the koi love feeding by it and swimming through it.

If I could afford a full set of showers, would I ?

You bet

[eds]

Got a quote back on the pumice - £390 per cubic metre. Unfortunately they've quoted me for 30-50mm pieces though! Not much use as they will pack together too much IMHO. I'm going to e-mail them back to see if they can source larger pieces and also send me a sample to see how porous and what shape it is.

[Duncan]

HI Greg

(Nitrobacter and Nitrosomonas) are chemotrophs, anything that is converting nitrogen is a chemotroph because they are sourcing chemical for they metabolism there are also nitrospira and a few more, they all work in unison, their reproduction is not fast and could never be described as fast , the trouble is, folks think of pathogenic bacteria reproducing at a 20 minute cycle this is not true of filter bacteria in the nitrogen cycle.

now Heterotrophs need carbon and are much more akin to pathogenic bacteria than chemotrophs they live in the water column but will gather in filters where there is a concentration of organic carbon

its like having several classes of vehicles first you have the "car" class and with it you have several makes/species of cars. Then we have motor bikes and several makes /species of motor bikes, they are all transport but different classes of transport does this make sence?

there is no place in a filter system for anaerobic bacteria we only want and need aerobic bacteria

Interesting point about crystal clear water and showers as based upon your words above i am running a shower / filter media configuration now that is based pretty much an ideal with a 14ft settlement then into K1 (200lts approx) and then over the 3 teir shower. I can easily turn the water green by knocking off the UV but i get very little in terms of bits in the water.

do you prefilter through settlement?

So are you saying here that given the right conditions a certain set of filter bacteria will establish in a set amount of time? - Another point then - So the potions and lotions we see

thats exactly what im saying, if filter bacteria mutlplied at the rate suggested 1 split into two in 10 or 20 minutes your filter would be up and running and fully functional in 48 hours but its not it takes around 60- 90 days its that slow

i have tested pretty much all the UK filter seeders my mate spike has tested all the USA ones as supplied in bottles of various guises and we have both come to the same conclusion if you use them you filter will cycle from a dead start in 60 days and if you dont it will take two months

Hmm - i don't understand this bit. Surely the dwell time is dependant on the type of filter your using? If you've got big chamber filters and they are 30% of your ponds volume the dwell time is going to be huge compared to a sieve and TT / Shower. I can appreciate that the Amm - Nitrite - Nitrate conversion by the bacteria is almost instant so its not the dwell time that's important to the conversion. But... differing water conditions must mean differing bacteria (if there are millions of them). How else would the Anoxic type filter work? - or am i missing the point? - Confused.

greg forget anoxic filters these are full of anaerobic bacteria that break the NO3 molecule to get at the "O" this is not a very good option in a pond you dont waht to be creating habitats for anaerobic bacteria

the whole point about dwell time is 30% of the pond surface area and the correct flow rate will out Mr average or the newbie in the right ball park but it has little to do with nitrogen convertion the bacteria dont have to reach out to catch an NH3 molecule before its gone lets put it another way if you had a bath tub of water and an electric appliance fell in it would you need to stand in it for a long time i mearly just touch it to get a shock?

differing water conditions must mean differing bacteria (if there are millions of them).

there are not that many species at work here in fact very few when compared to what we know about pathogenic but wha there is behaves in predictable ways first reproductoin is in hours not a few minutes if nutrienst are deprived they will stop reproducing and go into stasis as the weather cools down so the reproduction slows down untill eventually it will get that cold not only will they stop reproducing but will shut down altogether

i think with BHM the micro pores in the bricks quickly block and behind the capped off pores lie anaerobic bacteria that bust the NO3 molecule if you think about it the surface of the media would
have aerobic bacteria and would deal with NH3 and NO2 but water would saok through the pore to the subsurface and their anaerobic bacteria would deal with NO3 beacuse of the water speed down the tower you would get nitrogen oxide gassing off but , the same would be true of alpha grog also

i looks at BHM and then at Grog apart from shape and form the structure is the same i cant see that what ist mad of makes any difference apart from oit makes that structure or matrix for you

gotta run for now interesting stuff though

dunc

[greg]

Duncan,

Thanks - that seems so much clearer i think.

(Nitrobacter and Nitrosomonas) are chemotrophs, anything that is converting nitrogen is a chemotroph because they are sourcing chemical for they metabolism there are also nitrospira and a few more, they all work in unison, their reproduction is not fast and could never be described as fast , the trouble is, folks think of pathogenic bacteria reproducing at a 20 minute cycle this is not true of filter bacteria in the nitrogen cycle.

now Heterotrophs need carbon and are much more akin to pathogenic bacteria than chemotrophs they live in the water column but will gather in filters where there is a concentration of organic carbon

So the Chemtrophs use chemicals as their metabolisum source in order to do their job and are OK pretty much anywhere in the pond and filter system attached to surfaces due to this. So you'll easily find them on the pond walls etc etc.

Heterotrophs need carbon as the metabolisum source and as such will free float in the water column to find it. But will gather in area's where there is organic carbon (you mean waste?) such as filters. I'm thinking that this means you'd typically find them in settlements, Vortex's and other mechanical filter stages etc.

do you prefilter through settlement?

Yes i do - My set up is best described like so:- Total 3000 gallons (inc filters), Bottom drain to a 14ft (L) x 2ft (W) x 3ft (D) settlement chamber which is in a "U" shape so 7ft up each side with a turn in the middle. It then passes through a pair of 4" pipes into a 1.5ft (W) x 3ft (L) X 3ft (D) chamber with around 200lts K1 fluidized in it. It then goes over a 3 teir Bakki Shower using a 30,000lph pump before returning to the pond.

i think with BHM the micro pores in the bricks quickly block and behind the capped off pores lie anaerobic bacteria that bust the NO3 molecule if you think about it the surface of the media would have aerobic bacteria and would deal with NH3 and NO2 but water would saok through the pore to the subsurface and their anaerobic bacteria would deal with NO3 beacuse of the water speed down the tower you would get nitrogen oxide gassing off but , the same would be true of alpha grog also

So were thinking that BHM is apparently so good at Nitrate removal due to the fact as well as "gassing off" easing the work on the filter bacteria we have a portion of anaerobic bacteria which can deal with the Nitrate. I think people mis-understand the term "blocking" when they think of filter media. To my mind there is a world of difference between a filter clogging to the point that it cannot pass water through it without backing up the water column / or running pumps dry - whereas fine pockets / pores in a media housing a filter bacteria due to their closed off nature is OK.



i looks at BHM and then at Grog apart from shape and form the structure is the same i cant see that what ist mad of makes any difference apart from oit makes that structure or matrix for you

gotta run for now interesting stuff though

dunc[/quote]

[Brockp]

Hi again...sorry posting a lot but this level of probing gets the brain going;

Any body built a wide bodied TT (12 - 18") 4 foot tall with transparent sides that admits sunlight, filled with whatever highly porous media you like to see if not only does it remove nitrite but nitrate as well. Looks a bit like a vertical pond. I have a feeling we would see some excellent results. Put a circular air ring in the bottom to make sure the PO2 stays high.

Just a tought......perhaps it is not the media (ie must be porous etc) but the enviroment it is kept in that matters. Was always impressed with the green veg growing out of the showers on some of the most stable ponds.

just a thought.

Pete

[Duncan]

this is what io think happens, the pores become blocked so the top layer has aerobic activity converting NH3 and NO2 but water soaks through to the subsurface where anaerobic activity takes place here NO3 is busted up by anaerobic activity into N2o and NO, of course NH3 and NO2 would get down into the anaewrobic bacteria but there is nothing down there to directly influence these

[carlejo]

I remember reading a post on ****** site. The only reason I read it was because it was about a member about to convert from the multichamber route to BHM showers. ****** done his best to dissuade(sp?) the member to not go this route.
His reasons were that he trialled identical size ponds/stock/feed rates/temps,etc .......one pond was BHM, other pond was multichamber......trial lasted 6 months and he claimed there was absolutely no difference in growth/skin quality/shimmies, health problems. Now to me 6 months is way too short a period to 'trial' something.

I know Maurice posted something along the lines of he never gets any health problems(ulcers, sores) anything at all with BHM ponds, but with his ponds that only have nexus as filtration, he does occasionally have some sores, etc.

Duncan/anyone, would you say that grog will do a job just as good as BHM ?

[eds]

I view the structure of BHM in a similar way Duncan but much more complex. I see it almost like one of those images where when you magnify it and look at a small part that small part resembles the whole in miniature and as you look closer and closer you see a similar picture emerging.

In other words when you look at BHM with the naked eye you see the obvious holes and fissures. If you looked closer at those you'd see even smaller holes and fissures and so on. Only the smallest, IMHO, will block with bacterial colonies, the rest will allow water to still pass through but at different rates.

In my BHM that has been running loads of those pores and fissures are still open allowing water to flow over, around and through the media. I also think with the random structure of the BHM there will be varying sizes and shapes of these which will mean that different areas of the media will have varying conditions with different flow rates from essentially nothing to very fast. I feel this is part of what makes BHM so good, but this is just anecdotal based on my experiences with BHM and also sintered glass material in my tropical tanks when compared to plastic media. When using sintered glass material in tanks I find that the bacterial colonies are so much more resiliant to cleaning and other changes and I've never had nitrite spikes after cleaning. I feel as confident with BHM whereas I'm always a bit more cautious with the K1 in my main pond filter.

As Carl says Maurice has supreme confidence in his shower filtered ponds. I've seen fish in bad shape put in them, more in hope than expectation, from the mud ponds or nexus filtered ones and a couple of weeks later they're like different fish. It's also noticeable that there never seem to be marks or knocks on fish in those ponds. The only exception I know of is one time when one pond was ludicrously stocked for a few weeks due to a brief shortage of space. When Maurice split those fish between two of the ponds the knocks and marks went completely within 6 weeks (between my two visits to the farm).

My biggest issue with alternatives like grog is their longevity, porosity and whether their shape will mean that they will catch detritus and hold onto it.

I've got a reply from the source of the pumice and a sample will be winging it's way to me soon. They can supply a grade with pieces of around 80mm, so we'll have to see what the stuff is like! How many boxes of BHM do you think you'll need to make a cubic metre?

[carlejo]

I've got a reply from the source of the pumice and a sample will be winging it's way to me soon. They can supply a grade with pieces of around 80mm, so we'll have to see what the stuff is like! How many boxes of BHM do you think you'll need to make a cubic metre?

Rough guess ?.... 12-15 boxes.

There was a USA site, might have been koiphen, and there was a post on a few years ago about pumice.
It was quite a good post and from memory the pumice was free but it was where it was located, no-where near and koi keepers. It had to be collected(large pieces and then broken down) and transported to wherever the keeper lived and I think that's what put everyone off......Imagine having to collect your own, free BHM and all you had to do was to drive say a 1000 mile round trip, and break it up yourself .........anyone got a 7.5 tonne lorry ?
I'll try and find the post

[boogatee]

why would a showered pond be more healthy than a non-showered pond? is there any science behind that statement?

that's not meant to be taken as a criticism or being argumentative, but as a genuine question ....

if media is just a residence/home/place for bacteria to live, then surely there is little or no difference in where the bacteria lives ... be it grog, BHM or plastic media (K1 or matting etc etc) all other things being equal. i.e. similar flow rates, setup appropriately for the media etc etc

My pond turns over every 20 or so minutes .... what would be the benefit of doing, essentially, the same thing through a shower over BHM as opposed to using a nexus and plastic media?