Here's a picture; like I said, the blocks have hardly any coloration at all, just a pale touch of brown. They probably won't darken much until next Spring when feeding resumes.
Here's a picture; like I said, the blocks have hardly any coloration at all, just a pale touch of brown. They probably won't darken much until next Spring when feeding resumes.
Last edited by kimini; 03-06-2019 at 04:02 PM.
This filter design in your pics/ video is interesting. thanks for showing that. I didn't think biofiltration did that much for clarity. I'm confused by that.
I'm going to make a low profile filter this winter so I have time to get my design right since winter here lasts forever
Going back to an earlier comment about the flushing design that would have a con of being loud, can someone show me a low profile flushing design or any flushing design that starts out going thru a sieve? Is there a way to shut off the flushing feature so it just runs thru when you don't want to hear it flushing while enjoying the pond? This would allow 50 % crashing water and then 50% submerged with a good channeling reducing cleanout, right?
My budget is small both on the build and the electricity and I want to get the most ghp with the least head so low profile would be better then a barrel.
I have a ton of kaldnes in 3 sizes so using it would be cheap for me. Any links or ideas?
Should I move this to it's own thread or is adding it here with your comments ok?
https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showth...e-filter/page2
this post is 8 years old. Hasn't anyone got anything more recent?
03 March 2019 Update:
For the first time since the pond was built (21 months ago), nitrate has dropped to near zero. That said, we've been getting a lot of rain, plus the fish haven't been fed since November, so how much of that is the shower is a big unknown. The real test will be as we ease into Spring and feeding starts up again.
If you sense that I remain skeptical, I am. If nitrate stays low on into the summer, I'll give credit to the filter, because everything else has remained constant, but how it's achieving that remains a mystery, but time will tell.
Last edited by kimini; 04-07-2019 at 06:02 PM.
Not all filters... shower filters included, lower NitrAtes.
member
I mean denitrifying filters exist in waste treatment. I just think that if you wanted to do it reliably on a pond, you'd need a big static bed with a pump on a microcontroller that is measuring DO of the effluent.
I don't know enough to say one way or the other. I built this to let the filter tell me what it's capable of. If it can reduce nitrate, great, and understanding how it does so is the end goal.
how much is one of those blocks of cermedia cost? $50?
To be honest, I don't remember. Ask Zac, who I bought them from.
Last edited by kimini; 03-06-2019 at 04:00 PM.
Up until October 2018, biofiltration consisted of a moving-bed in an IBC container, and nitrate was alway 40+ ppm, staying high no matter how often the water was changed (yet the fish never seemed to mind). The MB was replaced by the shower filter and was fully switched over mid-November 2018. Once online, I didn't think it fair to evaluate its effectivity until it had time to season, and, since it was going into winter, waiting until Spring feeding started seemed reasonable.
We started feeding the 11 15-24" koi about 4 weeks ago - we should have started earlier because they were pretty hungry straight away. Nitrate and ammonia had dropped off over the winter as expected, so that didn't really mean much since they weren't being fed. I don't know how long it takes a bio filter to come up to speed, but from what I'm seeing so far, I'm impressed. Since feeding started (roughly 8-16 oz/day), both nitrate and ammonia levels haven't increased. I'm not saying that they won't - maybe it takes time for the levels being added by the filter to raise the overall (6000-gal) pond concentration, but I've never seen it this low - ever. We'll see how levels are in another few months. If levels stay low, I might even become a shower believer, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know how it works.
On a related note, the media (kept in the dark and fed by a RDF) is staying very clean, with only a hint of brown bio coating.
Last edited by kimini; 04-09-2019 at 05:53 PM.
When I joined this forum, there was debate regarding trickle towers and showers, if they were interchangeable and did they do exactly the same thing. All the evidence points to no. It doesn't mean either is bad, it just means they are different.
If I have followed this thread accurately, it looks like you're moving roughly 7,100gph over 12 outlets in the filter/s. That is roughly 600gph at each distribution tray. I believe that qualifies as a trickle tower. They are highly effective at ammonia reduction and nitrate removal. You're also reaping the rewards of a low head installation in a costly energy consumption area.
It's the slower flow with media that can accommodate the voids you see in thicker media that lowers nitrates.
My own experience is that showers with high turn over rates do not lower nitrates. In fact, adding the shower on my old system increased them. It happened on my pond, I think Vipertom was another that experienced it. I'm sure there were more but those two come to mind.
Showers do a great job at oxygenating the water, getting rid of ammonia and getting a clarity and sparkle to water that were missing on my system before adding the showers. But my nitrates did climb.
How is the low head shower working? It seems to me that your design could be a real energy saver if it is as effective as a tall shower.
Instead of adding to the shower/trickle/nitrate thread, an update here will double as both. In short, nitrate levels on my low-profile shower are increasing. As for why, that's hard to say, because things are constantly changing in a pond in the spring, like food amount, water changes, water replacement amount and chemistry (tap vs rain), variations in sunlight, switching on UV (or not), amount of algae, etc., etc.
In a typical bio filter, nitrate is the end result and it's only reduced by feeding less, water changes, or getting consumed by algae. With a shower/trickle filter, when we see a drop in nitrate levels, it's tempting to conclude that the filter's responsible for the drop, but how do we know which factor (or which combination) is the cause? As of right now, it's working as well as the moving-bed filter that it replaced, but doesn't seem to be delivering on the nitrate-lowering property of some. Perhaps it's because it's not tall, yet others have a similar with tall shower filters, so it's not clear. What is clear though is that it was built to cut electrical cost, and it's certainly done that.
For others who have increased nitrate after switching to a shower filter, I don't follow that logic, since the filter produces nitrate. To say that the shower filter increases nitrate argues that the previous filter delth with it better, which seems like a stretch. The increase may well be any one or several of the above factors: feeding more, different water volume changes, etc.
Last edited by kimini; 05-07-2019 at 02:39 PM.
I think part of it is a specific distinction between a shower that is wide open to air and a trickle filter that is designed to keep air out, which could change the biological processes that occur. Also don't know why folks would see an increase in nitrate after going to a shower from (insert filter of choice here) - perhaps it's because the shower is just more efficient at the conversion to nitrate than whatever was used before. Unless the previous filter was also breaking down nitrate, it seems like it has to be a bump in efficiency if nothing else in the pond changes. Or as you say, people see that the shower is working well and then feed more and simply add more nitrogen to the system.
From my understanding, the bioconversion/denitrification of nitrate to N2 requires a low oxygen to anoxic environment and specific “facultative anaerobic chemo-litho autotrophic bacteria” that are capable of pulling oxygen from NO3 when in such a low-oxygen environment. So perhaps the media type or design of a shower has an effect on whether or not these types of local environments develop in the media. Or maybe it's a duration thing, the more mature a shower filter is, the more it's able to develop low oxygen areas where denitrification can occur. Pure conjecture from me....
I disagree. They are basically the same with a big grey area in between heavy fast water flow and less trickle flow. The salt water reef hobbyist seem to use trickle filters... the Koi pond hobbyist use shower filters.
I agree that the media type and/or the design of a shower filter has an effect on whether there is any space for denitrification to occur.