Originally Posted by
ShortyPen
Kaldness K1 is an amazing media. It was originally developed for the sewage industry, and it is heavily used in the commercial aquaculture world which not only stocks fish at a much higher density than we do, but they also have many scientific trials published for peer review. Makes sense because they have a lot of money and people's jobs on the line, and they need solid technology to support those.
Norm Walsh -- I think it is great you are doing a filter design contest in the other thread. I haven't seen any experiments that use your media, something that would be great for the koi community is to host scientific testing of your media side by side with other established media types such as K1. You would need to open the test up for peer review and be willing to run the testing multiple times if the experiment has possibilities of being contaminated. It is a lot of work, but would be extremely beneficial for the community. Our hobby has tons of hype, and a very small amount of actual controlled testing.
Here is an idea for a test setup:
3 identical stock tanks, such as the 6' diameter type (about 300 gallons)
Each tank has:
only one pump to run it
only 1 filter configuration
no UV sterilizer or auxiliary type devices
flow configured so the current in the tanks run the same speed
identical set of koi - same starting size, age, gender
same feed rate of the same food
same water changing schedule
same water treatments
heaters to keep the water temperature the same
located so they all get the same sun exposure -- or use lights on timers
ideally, the koi would be selected from the same spawn, and be of the same growth rate. When I breed koi, I notice there are some fast growers, some slow, and many average growth rate.
You would start the experiment by carefully weighing each koi and measuring their length. You can weight them with a scale, or measure their displacement by putting them in tub of water, marking the water line, then removing the koi and mark again. Then weigh the water that fits between those two marks.
During the experiment, you would need to take water quality samples on a regular basis and chart the results. Also would chart their growth.
*** I know I am missing factors, more thought needs to go into this experiment, it should have more discussion before starting. Also experiment cycles would need to be run multiple times to differentiate between startup and mature filters, plus compensate for difference in genetic makeup of the test subject koi -- possibly by having the koi swap tanks, or use new randomly selected koi and see if they have the same growth rate as previous subjects.
It would be a lot of work over a long period (like years), but this would be very valuable to the koi community as a whole, and if you publish the data on your website, would be a source of exposure & advertising, get you more traffic and help your business.
Shorty