Simply Koi and More Koi

I’m very interested in Dr. Novak’s Anoxic Filtration system theory and would be interested to hear members thought’s on it. Have any of you built one?

I intend to try it myself and will try and document the pond readings as I go forward if this is of interest to members.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Dave

Hi Dave;

There was along thread on Koi Magazines site last year about this with people having, as you expect, mixed views. It's worth a read though before you get started. One helpful hint is ensure you buy all the cat litter you are going to need before you start up a discusion. Our local Tesco (the only large supplier of the type you will need) alamost ran out last year.

I leave other to disuss the science but I found his book/paper fascinating reading. http://www.mankysanke.co.uk/assets/imag ... eading.jpg

Peter

Hi Peter

I've read Syd's site with great interest.

I was the one responsible for emptying some Tesco's sites in Surrey late last year and am hoping to do the same on my visit to the UK this coming weekend.

My plan is to place a sieve before the Anoxic Filter to remove the larger waste and then have about 40 baskets of filter material.

I will record TDS, pH, phosphate, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, KH & GH both before the change and then weekly afterwards. If anybody thinks I need to record anything else then please shout.

Dave

Hi Dave

I am also running a pilot in my growing on pond so we should compare notes.

Could you add the pond volume (preferably measured and could you also record the water volumes that you use for water changes and for top ups for evaporation and water temp would nice together with the watercress yield! (I joke).

Number/size of fish, a daily weight of food fed would be useful together with the name of the food (so we can look at the protein load) would be useful.

And please post the data so we can follow it an Excel spreadsheet would be ideal.

Peter

Hi Peter,

All of your requests are no problem, you just need to tell me haw to post an Excel spread sheet.........

Dave

Hi Duncan

How do we post spreadsheets as attachments on the site ?

Peter

I tried this late last year, with some baskets on a shallow shelf within the pond. All I can say is that the cat litter dissolves slowly and dumps all around the pond making a mess. If your going to do this make sure there is some setlement between the fiters and the main pond, oh and finding the right cat litter in Surrey is nigh on impossible

Water parameters didnt change

peter

you cant post a spread sheet with out i turn it on in the admin panel, trouble is i switch it on for the whole forum and thats no really somthing i want to get into

so if you send me the spread sheet ui can upload it and place a link for you, failing that do the old Alt-print screen trick and paste it to a power point slide trhen save that as a JPG and you can upload this yourself as its a photo now

dunc

im not got a great handle into these things but i would like to say one or two things

i presume these are to reduce "Nitrate NO3" sine the other parameters can generally be handled in all but the crappyiest filtration systems , but heres the thing:

i visit loads of pond per year doing pond diagnostics and health consultations and i seldom every find a pond that is out of control with nitrate and not being managed properly this is because most folks these days do their water changes on a regular basis. so if we can agree this i can move on

next we come to the bakki shower if we are to believe what they say about these then nitrate is not an issue here!

next we come to folks like myself who employ RO systems to a total loss system nitate is unmeasurable in my pond and is suspect in other ponds employing RO

so my question is why would you want to be growing anaerobic bacteria to do this job given the fact if you go down this route you cant exactly control the types of anaerobic species your gonna get

now for myself there is no way i want to promote this type of bacteria in pond be it from an anoxic filter or bakki shower because of the potential o have for opening pandoras box, but thats just me there is no way i want to create a condition devoid of O2 to create bacteria it goes against everything i have been taught and teach

But for those of us that also keep marines and corals, then anearobic filters are quite normal and well established. Live sand and live rock are all just natural examples of the BHM media where you have aerobic activity on the outside and anearobic on the inside. Even the Eheim wet/dry filters use this principle

With Koi is easier cos you can have a much larger volume of water, and total loss trickle systems. My Koi pond even has many plants that help reduce NO3

On my 30 gallon marine tank I need to use the anaearobic filters to maintain NO3 at zero or I will get zero coral growth and a ton of algea. Due to the cost of salt etc you cant run a trickle system, and weekly 20% changes will not deal with the NO3 build up. Live sand and real rock and my Eheim work. My NO3 stays unmeasurable

must confess never considered the marine scenario but in this instance you have no choice but to go this route as you say trickling is not an option

but for koi ponds there are plenty of options and as you say plants help with NO3, but then again this is not anoxic filtration at work

I am also guessing but when your near the core of the porous BHM or of the porous glass based or pumice based media like it or not we get close to anoxic conditions which is presumably why the showers get rid of nitrate so well. This is more of a question than a statement so wide open for comments !

Peter

Look, peter guys, I ain’t got a great interest in this anoxia thing I have very little interest in it other than its good to expand your knowledge base from a technical point of view , I will bug out of this but I will say this:

Yes peter that’s exactly what happens although water containing solutes penetrates below the surface the aerobic activity at the surface uses all O2 at the surface so all that’s left for the anaerobes is chemically locked oxygen

I started reading syd’s missal in the read me first file but came across this and gave up instantly cuz the clear biological understanding was not there

Syd wrote “Anoxic: -Anoxic does not mean
the same as anaerobic. In an
anaerobic region there is a
complete absence of oxygen. In
an anoxic situation, there is
oxygen present but it is at a very
low level”.

Actually Syd is wrong, Anoxic or Anoxia means No or devoid of all oxygen for respiration purposes and in fact Hypoxic or Hypoxia means low levels of oxygen for respiration purpose. In an anoxic situation all that’s left is elemental “O” that’s lock into a chemical bond to a molecule, so if the system works as Syd claims it does with low level oxygen, its or should be called a hypoxic filter if its works how we all think it works then it is indeed an anoxic filter I can only presume the cat litter is/was used for excluding oxygen penetration

The kinds of bacteria that convert nitrate do use oxygen but operate without direct O2

What they do is break the NO3 molecule to get at the “O” it contains if you look at it we have one nitrogen atom and 3 x oxygen atoms, so if the bug utilises one oxygen atom we have NO2 nitrite and if this happens again we have NO then another nitrogen can join the group and you end up with nitrous oxide N2O so if they do this often enough you will end up with N2O and this is gassed off, “simples”

But if we allow oxygen even in low levels we give up this option of breaking the NO3 molecule as we will start to promote aerobic bacteria

Duncan couldn't agree more;

I had a long ding dong on another site about this last year. As you say true anoxia in nature almost never exists except a total vacuum certainly not in a pond .

In these basket filter settings, as you said, we are talking about an hypoxic not an anoxic environment and then the biology starts looking very shaky.

Some people seem to get some good results with this approach hence my little experiment. Not only that I like watercress.

Peter