bakki experiment

[Duncan]

anyone up for a bakki shower experiement?

what i need you to do is turn your shower upside down( not literally) just move the media from the bottom into the top and visa versa so what was once in your top tray is now in the bottom and what was once in the bottom is now in the top,

then start recording your water parameters on a daily basis for ammonia and nitrite etc

dunc

[greg]

Duncan,

I'd be up for this, but will need to get this weekend out the way as i'm showing my koi at the EMKC show. Then i'd wanna be certain that i'd no whitespot outbreak on the return. So a couple of weeks to be certain and then i'm happy to play along.

[Gazza]

I knew this was going to happen

Lucky i look again i very nearly went out to turn the shower upside down

Well done Greg i am glad you have gone for it as its a lot of work for me and i bet i would of fallen in

[Duncan]

go on Gazza have a go but keep the canmera's running

nobody asked me why yet????????????????

dunc

[Gazza]

Hi Dunc,

You just want to see me fall in don't ya

I have my suspicions but go on why young man

[eds]

I do this a couple of times a year with my diy shower as detritus collects in a couple of spots and need to do it again next week. The only thing is I'm not at home to take daily measurements sorry. I've never noticed any signs of water quality issues after doing this and have never backed off the amounts of food afterwards.

[Duncan]

well this is a what if experiment, ( this is how my mind works all the time) i dont just accept the norm i gotta test it !

In a submerged filter you get whats called resource partitioning in ,other words because of the way the nitrogen cycle occures your ammonia converting bugs are at their most concentrated at the start of the filter system and the nitrite converting bugs are at greater concentrations at the end. This is because the source of ammonia is in the pond, where as the source of Nitrite is in the filter from the ammonia eating bugs . so as most fully matured ponds and filters Nitrite is undectable, if your a tiny Nitrite eating bug there is little point in being at the start of the filter run far better to be at the end where there is food to eat.

so i would like to know if we turn this on its head and put the bugs in a position where they are nor natural we may see a blip in the readings and a situation where because the amonia eating bugs are at the end and pooring nitrite into the pond, and because it will be around 1 hour before the nitrite is processed we should see background nitrite along side background ammonia..

what we have done is make the nitrite pour staight into the pond just as fish do with ammonia, so there should now be a lag time of various times before it can be processed

now this may be a non event it may be that your filters are so good they can adapt and of course not all the respective bugs will be in the end they should be, logic only dictates the grteater numbers will be so will this make the difference. and how larger part does the pond wall play in all this, and of course we may coem down to what we have already discussed large RO systems replacing pond water in large volumes

so we may have to adjust these experiments to expand on these factors

dunc

[greg]

Duncan,

All is looking OK with the koi after the koi show and no signs of anything i need to treat for. So i'm thinking we are not far off being ready to do this.

It will be the weekend before i have time to make the changes to the trays if that's OK but if you could outline the exact tests and times you want me to carry them out then i will get my stuff together and be ready.

note:- I'm currently not feeding as its winter for my koi till the end of March - does this affect what your thinking of doing?

[emmaandaj]

Hi Dunc,
Il be more than happy to give this ago on my shower-just let me know what you need me to do/rcord parameter wise.
Andy

[Duncan]

hi guys

ideally if this is going to show anything up at all we need to be at least feeding a reasonable amount

what we need to do is, put the middle media in the top bottom in the middle and the top at the bottom what we are trying to do is put ammonia eaters at the bottom and nitrite at the top

then if anything is noticed i would expect to see a raised nitrite spike in the pond but this would be short lived if all goes to plan so you would have to be diligent with readings in the first few days after the shift around

dunc

[boogatee]

It'd be interesting to see if this works as you expect Dunc ... also, a system filtered by moving media wouldn't conform to this theory, would it?