About once a year, I publish some more biofiltration cycle data, and James Reillly (JR to most) spends about 10 to 100 times more time trying to discredit the data than I took to generate it. Let's see if this year is any different, or if perhaps JR is mellowing out a bit and can think outside of his tiny little box.
Last Fall, I moved all my koi from my outside koi pond to my inside koi pond to drain the pond. There were two objectives. The bottom drain piping had a leak, and the bottom drain valve needed replacement. Since both of these were buried deep in the ground, and required an empty pond, I decided to simply leave that pond empty all winter and fix the plumbing this spring. I also ran a "soap" test on the empty pond right before Halloween for Daniel Moreing, and as a part of that test ran 6 consecutive 10 ppm PP treatments through the entire pond and filter system to completely clean it up and burn off the biofilm. Activated carbon was used finally to soak away the soap from the soap test, the consecutive PP treatments had the pond bright purple while the water had a suds stand 6 feet high for a week before the activated carbon was used to remove everything from the water and filter system before draining the pond.
Well, finally last Sunday, the leak was fixed, the bottom drain valve was replaced, so I filled the pond with water and turned on the filter system. Then I added 500 milliliters of lab reagent ammonium hydroxide to dose the pond at a measured 2.4 ppm ammonia.
That was Sunday. Today (the normal 4 day miracle of fast pond biofilter cycling) the pond tests 0.5 ppm ammonia, 0.03 ppm nitrite, and 0.0 ppm nitrate by advanced Hanna colorimeter test techniques. The filter is cycled and ready for fish. I will add another ammonia charge just to make sure, it will be consumed in two days I am sure.
Why did the biofilter cycle so fast? Well, I dumped a 12 pond sack of baking soda into this 6000 gallon pond system. I dumped in 4 pounds of Koi Clay, also found to give fast biofilter cycle times, particularly for nitrite and nitrate cycling. I dunped in 3 pounds of pure calcium chloride and 3 pounds of Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate hydrate), also known to improve cycle time when the source water is soft with low mineral content. I have two large trickle tower filters, one is a No 5 Nevada Water Gardens lava rock fountain, meaning 24 inches in diameter and 36 inches high (heavy to move!). The other trickle tower is a homemade waterfall filled with feather rock in the air with water cascading over it. There is a Sacamento Koi bead filter and a Sacramento Koi glass filter in the system. There is a Nitritech 911 vortex system in the system. But the entire system had those 5 consecutive 10 ppm PP treatments right before draining the pond last Fall, one would think that would kill a biofilm very well.
There is no visible algae anywhere, no plants to consume ammonia. If the ammonia is degassing from the trickle towers, okay, there is nothing wrong with that if it is happening, the water is still safe for the koi! But from all appearances, it just cycles that fast. That filter system cycled that fast when every component in it was brand new a few years ago, this week only repeated the data I generated before with this system.
I also started up a virgin shower filter for my Brady growout koi recently. For some reason, that shower filter took 14 days to cycle, I don't know what delayed it. I used the same baking soda/Koi Clay/Epsom salt/calcium chloride mix in that simple system. The ammonia peaked in 6 days, I used Amquel to protect the fish, the ammonia was gone in 13 days. The nitrite peaked at 10 ppm on the 10th day, I used salt to protect the koi and did NO water exchange while the filter cycled. Lizzie said the growout koi acted differently when the ammonia was high and when the nitrite was high, but they did not get visibly sick, did not get ulcers, kept on growing, etc.
Well, that's all I got to say, meaning filter cycling has not been a significant issue for me for many years since I "got the right formula". That formula is to have plenty of shower or trickle tower filtration, keep alkalinity high with baking soda, keep hardness in a good range, and overdose with a huge Koi Clay charge.
It works for me, as they say on new car stickers, "your mileage may vary".
Good luck out there, don't expect me to respond to JR's normal long rants on the impossibility of what I have documented so many times now. What am I going to believe, JR or my lying eyes?