BHM - Why?

[greg]

OK,

I'll kick one off and try to have a reasonable discussion with some FACTS rather than the usual arguments that follow this topic. On a couple of other forums this topic has popped up and the standard arguments have cropped up of its now better than any other media etc - fair enough.

But is there any REAL science out there to say that BHM is best used in its environment of a shower than say crystal Bio etc etc?

I could only think of one way to try to justify it with this post elsewhere a few days ago.


swore i wasn’t going to get involved in this as it seems to be one of those “Your a believer or non believer” type debates which go round in ever increasing circles with no conclusion. The person who stated that in order to see for yourself then you need to fit a shower and run one was very wise.... as this is the only true test – of both the system, media and your skills.

So lets even something out – I am a believer and have been for 12months or so as i ripped out 20+ layers of Japanese matting cartridge and fitted a 3 tier Bakki Shower loaded with nearly 50kg of 2nd hand Bacteria House Media (BHM) of both the old type and the new type of BHM. (Now lets be clear i do not understand why the need for the new type of media and cannot see a difference in terms of what that will achieve but i digress.....

So why the replacement? – simple really i was sick and tired of cleaning the matting and the “waste” it held and wanted to make an improvement to my ponds filtration / system.

Now i am no scientist that is for certain but i like to think that i am logical in my thinking to an extent so.....

Why does BHM get rated so highly?

a). It is practically the only media that can handle the EXTREMELY high flow rates of water that are involved in a Bakki Shower long term. (I pump over 5500gph over mine)

b). It has a very high surface area number which also due to the firing in the kiln seems to offer open pores for the bacteria to live in / colonize without blocking.

c). Filter bacteria appear in multiple strains and types – we know there are Millions of different types of bacteria in our world.

d). It offers a home for a complete eco-system – (i have little shrimp type critters living in my BHM)

e). It performs better in daylight unlike most other media types (Mine is shaded one side and i get less life on the shaded side than the open one)

f). It is the only media ”i know of” that seems to cultivate moss / fern growth as part of its process. (and this also alters with the lighting conditions)

g). It is one of the only filtration methods that seems to be able to handle “dirty” un pre-filtered water

So is there one thing that you can point too that will say “BHM is best because......!”? No there isn’t but what i think it is about is a culmination of the situations needed for a Bakki Shower to work at its best and create a living environment for your koi and BHM seems to be the best overall contender to provide these conditions. I also wonder if you get “better” results for returning straight to the pond from the base of the shower rather than into a chamber and then pumping back or if this is purely based upon the lighting, turnover rates, aeration of pond water, etc that make the difference rather than location of the return.

Going to point c - Somebody mentioned that they didn’t believe that BHM colonized its own “specific” bacteria type. Well try to think of it slightly differently...... what if it colonized a bacteria type that your “current” media didn’t – one that preferred the high speed water flow that only BHM seems able to withstand without blocking on a long term basis. Did EA not bring out the “Bio-Chip” and “K3” due to the different structures of the media meant that differing types of bacteria (rotifers - i believe) could proliferate in numbers that they couldn’t seem to on K1 giving the nexus a more robust bacteria colony using two media types.
So it seems logical to me that it is entirely possible that there could be a bacteria that suits the BHM better than others – but without the scientific equipment and knowledge of millions of strains of pond bacteria and the environment that suits them best we (as a collective) will never know for sure.

I guess that another way to look at it is..... Bakki Showers and BHM are SYSTEM! They were designed to work together in harmony under guidelines and rules based upon what was wanted to be achieved in THAT situation.

So when you say any media will work as well in showers as BHM – why do we never get the arguments based around other filters and media’s? - could you not apply the same rules to other filter media / containers such as....

Bead filter – would K1, K3, Bio-Chips, Matting, Crystal Bio, Glafoam, BHM, brushes be any better / as good as than what was designed for that filter?

Nexus – Would Crystal Bio, Glafoam, BHM, matting, sand, beads, brushes, be any better / as good as than what EA designed for that filter?

We simply don’t get these discussions and when the question is asked it is openly accepted that a certain media should be used with a certain type of container. So maybe it is simply price of BHM that affects us tryin to justify that other “cheaper” media’s are just as suitable.

Perhaps it is about that PACKAGE rather than one single piece of the SYSTEM. Take a single item and i’m sure it can be argued for or against to suit whatever context you want it too. But take the complete set of rules and maybe there is only one answer for whatever you want to do to suit your OWN needs / pond / filter etc.

There is no right or wrong here – simply choices of systems i feel.

Crikey and i didn’t even need to mention the mystical powers of FIR etiher - LOL.

[Gazza]

Hi Greg,

Yes it always comes up now and then and we get the same old rubbish even down to the "Rich boys hobby" and it does get my back up as the majority of the time the guys giving out the BS are the ones who have never tried or run a Bakki Shower with BHM in it Then we get the so if BHM is so good why do dealers all sell all the other media that can go in showers well this is easy because they can and make money out of it

I have even had conversations with people who have run Bakki Showers and then removed them as they didn't work and are a load of rubbish and only good for chilling the water,but when asked how much BHM they had in the shower or the turnover you find out it didn't even have any BHM in it not the fairest of trials then me thinks.

All i can do is give my opinion as i am by now way near to being a scientist on water or filtration and after running ponds and set ups with BHM in showers i fine it works very effectively and better than alternatives that have been already said above.There are reasons and one of the biggest ones that with a big turnover other media do not perform as well as BHM and can wear which is something i have been told by people who have changed their media over to BHM that when they removed it you could actually see the wear. I also found i could not feed as much with other media not just because of the pond readings but also in some cases as it seemed to get stuck in the media making it much less effective in the system.

On my main pond i had a large TT (did not run it as a TT) system which i pumped from my skimmer line with a 16,000 pump and had no filtration and this run for years and never off until i removed it all and fitted a shower. The TT was filled with BHM only and the water just flowed from the top and straight out the bottom and back to the pond and when i fitted the new shower i removed the TT and emptied out the BHM and there was no build up or waste in the TT or on the BHM anywhere and this had not been turned off or touched since it was installed.

Shower and BHM IMO are a great combination of filtration and when set up correctly will work a treat and i honestly do believe that they have made a big difference to the condition of my fish

[Brek]

I do not run a BHM system but would love to try it, one of the questions I have though is my fish pond will be heavier stocked by the end of this summer by quite a margin as I fully expect the koi to be 60cm or over in the main, I want to a a sieve on my system to get shot of the bulk of solid matter, what concerns me most thought and this is something the above post has informed me of for the first time is, do they have to be used in sunlight? as the noise of pumping 13,000 lph over the shower is not going to please my neighbors, I was going to box mine into a 75mm jabfloor lined shed at the end of the pond to reduce the noise burden and to prevent heat loss in winter, will this significantly reduce the performance of the system?

[tomc]

No, they don't have to be in sunlight. The configuration really means that the media wouldn't see much natural light even if left in full sun (think of the floors of a car park). Mine are fully enclosed in polycarb and never see light. The only bacterial filter I have on the pond are the two double showers (ok, I have protein skimmer but it doesn't seem to do anything!).

Greg - I'm going to have to try to read your post in full. It was so long that I lost attention!

Tom

[Gazza]

Hi Brek,

No you do not have to install your shower in sunlight and many have them away from the pond in remote sheds and filter houses.

I have mine on the back of the pond as i have no room for it remote and run a good turnover so it does make a bit of a noise but have had no complaints from the neighbors and its very quiet here especially of a night. Due to being outside my shower is enclosed within 25mm polycarb and it works a treat

Tom please try to pay attention more when Greg is going for it

[StuW]

Ok have run a shower for a few years now without BHM (blagdon ceramic media and flocor to get crashing effect) but with very high flow rates as well as AJs experience with the same set up with Bio Chrystal in the most over stocked growing on pond for the last 3 years while his pond was being built I personnaly think the most important factor is the flow rate rather than the media. Most people who run Bakkii showers with BHM do not seem to have run showers with other media, ( have any of you guys?) and those who have and have had problems tend to run too little water flow over them. Yes I think if you can afford it Bakki and BHM are definitely excellent media but I d believe that other media with high flow rates are close from my experiences, more than happy to be shot down in flames but just think on it.

[tomc]

Well, I've never thought anything "special" to BHM except that it's extremely porous but with a high, internal surface area with a "configuration" that allows it to remain clean under high flow. Other medias may well work but it's finding the right balance between high surface area and bio mass storage. You can imagine a shower of flucor would be pretty useful from a bio exposure viewpoint but might remain pretty clean.

Tom

[eds]

I agree with all the comments here, including StuW's, that BHM may be the best but it doesn't mean it's the only thing that works. I think the perfect media needs to be in large pieces that are smooth enough so that waste doesn't collect in any hollows (this could possibly be a problem with the feather rock a lot of people in the states seem to use - I'd love to find a source of it over here though to try it!); it needs to have fine cavities that extend throughout the media as well as having some closed end ones so there are a range of aerobic, anaerobic and parts that are low oxygen so that there are a range of niches for different bacteria and it needs to not degrade in water. To my mind BHM does these things really well.

I got some of the fake BHM doing the rounds a few years back and it let me see some of the factors that I think are behing BHM being so good. The fake stuff was noticeably less porous, smaller and the outside was smoother. Compared to real BHM it was quite a subtle difference but I think it would have made a huge difference to how it would have performed. I sent it back to the seller, who was says it was sold to him in as real BHM and he didn't know it was fake and therefore resold it as such (not sure I believe this though), and got a full refund.

Here are some pics,



You can see how much more porous the real BHM is here,


Lots of closed cells here - not linked together,



The box it came in,

[greg]

With regards the sunlight aspect here are a couple of pictures of the Bakki Media from my shower (taken this morning) - sad i know!

My shower is situated inside a filter shed above a pumping chamber with one side being exposed to sunlight via window measuring approx 2ft wide by 1.5ft tall. It is usually open around 50% of it. The other side of the shower faces inward and it screened off using clear 10mm polycarb to prevent condensation covering all the equipment in the shed. I pump in the order of 5500gph over the three tier shower and as mentioned above it contains both old and new media types.

The ones pictured for the sake of clarity are the "OLD" media type. I took the two pieces of media from the SAME tray but one from the "Sunlight" side of the tray and the other from the "Shed" side of the tray. They were also as best possible taken from similar area's of flow rate of water. As you can clearly see the moss etc is what i'd call properly established on the "sun" side whereas the "shed" side there is no growth at all.





I have now swapped the pieces of media over and will re-address this in say 4 - 6 weeks and it will be interesting to see the changes if any (I suspect there will be).

For me the media on the "sun" side looks much more alive with the healthy moss growth on it. I have noticed in the winter that the moss growth drops back so i will try to address this in the summer also with pictures of the full shower trays showing both sides of the trays and the dramatic differences.

Any Thoughts?

Eds,

Did you keep a couple of pieces of the "fake" media - if so how does it compare in condition / bacteria levels compared to the genuine stuff?

[Duncan]

Greg I really really want to answer this but Im rushed right now but something to think on.

Just for the record Ken at koi collection has laods of showers but full of grog and all his showers have plant life hanging out of them almost to the water top( these are suspended on wires over the ponds about 3 ft clear of the water) anyone whos been there will varify this.

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

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.

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.

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:


Getting back to how you had your J mat, I think a lot of people get this and other things to do with filters very wrong even the dealers get it wrong Rickdon is a point in case this guy hasn't a clue about fluid dynamics or filter bacteria that’s a fact and its undisputable he aught to limit his advice to fish can swim. . This is probably the reason a lot of folks give BHM great press its not because its that great it does a job but is nothing special but rather because its fool proof, you stack it rack it and run the pump there is nothing else to it and nothing you can get wrong, where as with conventional filters you can get almost everything wrong so I respectfully submit the folks who rave about it had a horrible, horrible set up filter’s If mikey puts this stuff in where folks have been sold a crappy system that’s not set up right, not big enough and poorly configured of course they are going to be marvelled at it! It goes without saying

I find BHM is usually raved about by: A) dealers making a fortune out of it: B) folks that are in with and close to these dealers that go with the flow. As you know i have been a great friend of Mikey's, but I’ve told him he’s off his trolley with this stuff and milking with out a bucket cuz he has no science! Far infra red? I could fill your shower trays with old trainers and get far infra red off them all far infra red is, is stored heat. Now we come to the cost OMG have we gone mad? We are paying all this money for clay mixed with sawdust or something similar and then heated so the saw dust disintegrates leaving holes?
Trust me I’m willing to bet sintered glass or lava rock would do the same job, Im not saying any better but a hell of a lot cheaper

As for cleaning I clean my J mat once a year and its always a none event because its configured right its usually very clean the only thing I will concede is it does need changing now! But what I would ask of all those people running showers where do all those organics go if they are not in the filter, and if most of them were not running RO systems what would happen to them?


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 .

[eds]

Eds,

Did you keep a couple of pieces of the "fake" media - if so how does it compare in condition / bacteria levels compared to the genuine stuff?

Sorry but i didn't keep any of the fake media as the way the boxes were packed you could see straight away if one was missing. And I'm an honest bloke too and it wouldn't have felt right to me.

When i got this i talked to Mike Snaden about it and while he obviously has a vested interest in people not buying the fake stuff, (at the time he didn't have any so wouldn't have got any business from me at that time) he said that the fake stuff seemed to break down over time from the reports he'd had from people.

Personally it felt chalky and the holes were really obviously different to me in that they were all closed little spheres and i couldn't blow through the media, unlike the real BHM even after being in my filter for a long time. I am glad i sent it all back.

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.

[B.Scott]

Ed, you can't blow through feather rock either. It has alot of closed cells as well.

[eds]

Ed, you can't blow through feather rock either. It has alot of closed cells as well.

Have you got some or know where i can get some this side of the Atlantic?

Even without as much open-ness as BHM, if it's overall smoother than lava rock with fissures and cracks and a lot less money it's got to be worth a go!

[B.Scott]

So called "Lava rock" Is actually a bi-product of burning coal and not real rock at all. Sources of "feather-rock"or Pumice would be places with volcanic activity past or present. My first thoughts would be Italy or Greece, Iceland. I did a little digging on the internet for "Pumice Rocks UK" and several places that deal in stone poped up. I would think this woulf be the best plave to look.

[eds]

So called "Lava rock" Is actually a bi-product of burning coal and not real rock at all. Sources of "feather-rock"or Pumice would be places with volcanic activity past or present. My first thoughts would be Italy or Greece, Iceland. I did a little digging on the internet for "Pumice Rocks UK" and several places that deal in stone poped up. I would think this would be the best place to look.

Cheers! I'll have a search. I might send an e-mail to my local stone merchants too that I used to use when I was a garden designer and see what they can do.