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    Thread: Roddy’s current potassium permanganate practice

    1. #41
      Roddy Conrad's Avatar
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      A few of you may have met me over the years when I was traveling to koi shows and giving talks at AKCA conventions. Most of you haven’t. So maybe a little explanation is in order.

      My PhD was actually in the a new program at the University of Southern California to develop more rocket scientist for the active space program in the 60’s. I was funded by NASA to go through that program, and my PhD thesis was in a related subject. Upon graduation in 1967, USC had not yet been authorized to label a PhD degree “rocket science” so the choices I was given were engineering, mathematics, physics, or chemistry. I chose chemistry. There was no obligation in the program to work for NASA after graduation, and I chose to go to work for the DuPont company in October, 1967.
      With DuPont, my various inventions, products, and patents were new synthetic fibers, new processes to manufacture plastics, and the intermediates and active products in a family of herbicides, a few fungicides, and some on line measurement devices to avoid environmental pollution. I designed, built, and ran chemical plants to make these products in North Carolina, Germany, France, Italy, Iran, Alabama, Texas, Puerto Rica, and West Virginia, teaching engineers the technology so I could move on to the next interesting new thing.
      On my 60th birthday in 2001 I left DuPont to work for the Bayer Corporation at a plant near Charleston, WV to manage the numerous process and safety issues manufacturing 13 insecticides from the infamous chemical methyl isocyanate that had killed ~10,000 in an industrial accident in 1984 in Bhopal, India. Local groups persuaded the legal systems to shut down that West Virginia plant, and that employment ended in December, 2018, when Bayer terminated employment of all its West Virginia employees at the final erasure of its presence in West Virginia. That event caused creation of the opportunity of free retraining for all Bayer’s terminated employees so I accepted a free ride through another graduate school for a Master’s degree in Environmental Science, from which I graduated in December, 2020.
      I currently work as a traveling consultant resolving chemical process and safety issues through consulting firms.
      So this little explanation of what this poor farm boy from Oklahoma has been doing with himself may be helpful to comprehend my potassium permanganate koi pond protocols. This is really simple stuff from my view.
      Last edited by Roddy Conrad; 06-29-2021 at 07:44 AM.
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    2. #42
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      Dr. Conrad, I’ve basically considered you my mentor in ponding for the past 15 years, and am also inspired by your longevity protocols (grateful when you sent me a lot of your material a few years ago). However, i have slacked off over the years using PP without suffering any problems with my ponds.

      Now, I have a new (1.5 year old) 2500g system with 10 koi and 6 large goldies. These new posts of yours have me thinking about starting up again in the “Better Ponding Through Chemistry” mode, lol.

      I have had a few minor issues - a couple of goldfish deaths (could be from old age), a greenish brown tint to my water despite an adequate UV, and very slow growth of some new fish, it seems like. Definitely nothing serious, but I do prefer things to be perfect … : )
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    3. #43
      Roddy Conrad's Avatar
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      Today is a 4th day, to answer a few questions earlier, pictures of the pond before and immediately after PP addition. Pond temperature today is 86 degrees Fahrenheit here in Charleston, WV.
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    4. #44
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      SO Roddy, in an earlier post where someone had fish flashing at 1 PPM. You are suggesting that if your fish flash at 1 PPM that they have some ongoing issue like a parasite? And then once that issue is resolved the fish wont flash at the addition of PP?

    5. #45
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      Roddy:

      I have more questions :-)

      1. You said that some parasites can be more easily killed by formalin-MG than PP, and you gave gill fluke as example. I wonder if you have got it confirmed, or a qualified guess?

      2. No matter what PP 1-2 ppm for 4+ hours frequently (weekly for instance) will still keep gill fluke under control I guess?

      Thanks again!

      Simon

    6. #46
      Roddy Conrad's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by mplskoi View Post
      SO Roddy, in an earlier post where someone had fish flashing at 1 PPM. You are suggesting that if your fish flash at 1 PPM that they have some ongoing issue like a parasite? And then once that issue is resolved the fish wont flash at the addition of PP?
      When the problems with parasites, and/or fungal infections, and/or bacterial ulcerations have been resolved, the fish laugh at the purple cloud and continue their feast on fresh high quality koi pellets while the deepest purple PP cloud is present.
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    7. #47
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      Quote Originally Posted by SimonW View Post
      Roddy:

      I have more questions :-)

      1. You said that some parasites can be more easily killed by formalin-MG than PP, and you gave gill fluke as example. I wonder if you have got it confirmed, or a qualified guess?

      2. No matter what PP 1-2 ppm for 4+ hours frequently (weekly for instance) will still keep gill fluke under control I guess?

      Thanks again!

      Simon
      The mild 1 to 3 ppm PP worked for me for many years until I bought a fresh batch of high quality koi last month. Then it didn’t so my game needed upscale new rules. I increased the PP concentration and frequency, and coupled it with the best chemical combination known to be effective when it last long enough, namely the formaldehyde and malachite green treatments as described in the first post of this thread.
      Last edited by Roddy Conrad; 06-29-2021 at 05:32 PM.
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    8. #48
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      Omg!


    9. #49
      Roddy Conrad's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by stephen View Post
      That is an interesting response that could have a wide range of interpretation.
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    10. #50
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      I am generally confident that my fish will be fine but how will the bio filter do? I feed over 4% body weight sometimes so there are a lot of organics. I don't want it to hurt my bio too much

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    11. #51
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      With all of this said there are still many variables involved with this. For example, I use PP on a daily basis as well, but to treat fish brought in from a mud pond. These fish go into clean almost organic free systems with simply skippy filter and small bead filters. The bulk of organics is fish waste, very little feed because of the fact they are going into treatments, and the fish themselves. In this clean of a system with a very low organic load, PP will stay purple for up to eight hours even with a fish load of one fish per gallon. Most any size fish will show signs of distress starting at 3 hours in 4ppm purple. The smaller the fish the sooner they become distressed. Larger fish start at about 4 hours in 4ppm purple, coming to surface. Once they come to the surface we start watching closely. If they react to us coming close, and swim down, they can be pushed a little longer. However when they come to the surface and DO NOT react to your presence, then the PP treatment must be deactivated or diluted. If not they will die.
      Also if you have a small fish load in your sytem, you may not notice any spikes in ammonia or nitrite if you have a large biomass of filtration. However, the filter will be set back and you will lose some nitrifiers. Again, if you have a large enough filtration system you may not notice this setback by seeing spikes. However if your filter is JUST big enough for your fish load normally, and you do those 4ppm treatments you WILL see ammonia and nitrite spikes over the next day or so, or you may even kill your entire biomass and all the bacteria and have to completely recycle the filtration.. It all depends on the type of filtration and how much total biomass you have in relationship to your fish load.
      So you see, it all comes down to variables, like fish load, organics load, biomass and other factors, as to whether you could do this as Roddy does. Most average hobbyist will not get away with this protocol and will kill their fish and/or their filters in many cases.

    12. #52
      Roddy Conrad's Avatar
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      Clean water where a 4 ppm PP dose lasts 8 hours or more has no relation to a typical hobbyist back yard koi pond.

      I write for other back yard koi hobbyist, and could not care less about what “no buddy” has to say about cleaning up koi harvested from a mud pond does to get his koi ready for sale.

      My point is “normal” koi ponds have water, filter systems, and sometimes plants, particularly algae growth, that rapidly consume not only PP doses, but also formaldehyde, and malachite green, and anything else the hobbyist is trying to use. Oxidation of the dissolved organics, particularly growth limiting pheromones, is a special challenge if high growth rate and the absence of the numerous parasites, fungi, and bacterial counts is desired.

      Resolving these problems without catching all the fish and treating the fish in clean water in a quarantine tank requires first cleaning up the pond water sufficiently so the treatment chemical has a chance to do its thing.

      If you want your little koi to grow to big koi, and frequent large water changes are too expensive, or are illegal where water supplies are limited, then you need to regularly use PP to clean up your pond water. If you want to be “conservative”, meaning take no chances of biofiltration damage, drop the dose to 1 or 2 ppm and repeat the dose until the purple/pink color lasts 30 minutes.
      Last edited by Roddy Conrad; 06-30-2021 at 08:59 AM.
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    13. #53
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      Hello Roddy:

      I have still more questions :-) Thanks again in advance!

      1) You said that it is still oxidizing when the water color is brown instead of pink. I wonder if the oxidizing capacity is there as long as the water is brown?

      2) I guess that it is the MnO2 that makes the water brown, then what has it become when the brown color disappears after some days without using H2O2?

      3) You wrote the nitrate will break down in the normal filtration system, right? Is it denitrification therefore it is necessary to not aerate the filter system too much? I have observed that my koi water only contains as low as 1/5 of nitrate based on amount of food I give: 34% protein in the koi food I use, 16% of protein is nitrogen, so 100 g food would give 24 gram nitrate theoretically. I feed 400-450 gram per day, which should add 100 g nitrate per day. But I only get rid of no more than 20 g nitrate each day by water change, 150 liter containing 80-140 ppm nitrate replaced with fresh water with 0 nitrate, and the koi don´t grow so fast).

      Thanks again!

      Simon

    14. #54
      Roddy Conrad's Avatar
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      Quote Originally Posted by SimonW View Post
      Hello Roddy:

      I have still more questions :-) Thanks again in advance!

      1) You said that it is still oxidizing when the water color is brown instead of pink. I wonder if the oxidizing capacity is there as long as the water is brown?

      2) I guess that it is the MnO2 that makes the water brown, then what has it become when the brown color disappears after some days without using H2O2?

      3) You wrote the nitrate will break down in the normal filtration system, right? Is it denitrification therefore it is necessary to not aerate the filter system too much? I have observed that my koi water only contains as low as 1/5 of nitrate based on amount of food I give: 34% protein in the koi food I use, 16% of protein is nitrogen, so 100 g food would give 24 gram nitrate theoretically. I feed 400-450 gram per day, which should add 100 g nitrate per day. But I only get rid of no more than 20 g nitrate each day by water change, 150 liter containing 80-140 ppm nitrate replaced with fresh water with 0 nitrate, and the koi don´t grow so fast).

      Thanks again!

      Simon
      The completely spent PP is manganese dioxide which is a low solubility dark brown/black solid. You will see it here and there on surfaces of the pond and filter system. The brown soluble compounds are still oxidizing compounds, intermediate oxidation states of manganese, and are still oxidizing pheromones. So I leave those forms working overnight, they are gone or hard to notice the next morning. That is when I use hydrogen peroxide to remove the last trace of brown color in the water. But the dark brown/black solids plated out here and there remain through hydrogen peroxide.

      Please be aware that any ammonia in contact with active PP forms is oxidized to nitrite or nitrate or to Nitrogen oxide gas which leaves the pond to the air.

      Please be aware there are many published technical papers that details the denitrification using aerobic bio treatment where the nitrogen is removed as nitrous oxides.

      Aeration to help remove the nitrous oxides is a good thing.

      The technical literature detailing denitrification by aerobic biofiltration measure concentrations of nitrous oxide and nitric oxide degassing from the biofilter.
      Last edited by Roddy Conrad; 07-02-2021 at 03:54 PM.
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      I'm trying the treatment again.
      Added 4g to 1500gallond pond running on 80LPM air pump, without dissolving it first. The pink/purple quickly turned brown after about 10 mins so I added another 2g which made it extended it another ~10mins. The fish seem to be content but spooked. It's been about 40mins since I've first added the PP and now they are seeking food againI'm goong to neutralize it at my last automatic feeder's feeding at 6pm so about 7.5 hours of total pp treatment.

      EDIT: Koi seems to be doing well after neutralization. I neutralize it early since this is the first treatment, and I do water change everyday (have to due to RDF). They are just spooked and not swarming the surface for food like usual but still gather to the feeding location.
      Last edited by NaturalK; 07-04-2021 at 06:05 PM.

    16. #56
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      Roddy ????

      Many newbies will be reading this so can you address water parameters prior to using PP What can do harm... what are the pitfalls?

      I have used PP for years without issue but know people have had great losses with improper doses and such
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    17. #57
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      A primary problem with PP use is that the use of any dechlorinator complicates using PP, since if there is still an active dechlorinator present it will consume the PP. Dechlorinators generally only last a day or so after adding, so this is a special problem only for use of a dechlorinator recently. In the situation of dechlorinator present, successive PP doses will be needed until the dechlorinator has been all reacted away.

      Another issue is accumulation of “muck” on the bottom of the pond and/or in the filter system. At one point in my pond hobby, I had two ponds with lots of lovely water lilies and other pond plants. One of them had goldfish, the other had golden orders. In the Spring I would remove the plants to get the accumulated muck out, but on occasion would instead use an air pump and air stones to stir it up so PP could simply oxidize it away. I can easily judge PP concentration by water color, and would add a PP dose, 2 to 4 ppm, and watch the purple/pink color be consumed, and when it was gone, dose again. But that would require 16 to 20 successive doses, all in the same day, before the PP lasted more than a few minutes. I never killed a goldfish or golden orfe doing this, but do not advise others to try this on a heavy layer of muck. My point in describing that is to indicate the difficulty in PP use in anything but a fairly clean koi pond. Plants in the pond complicate koi keeping; I gave up trying to keep plants in a pond with koi about 20 years ago. My other experience is that big koi quickly destroy any plants within their reach.

      Even with my main filter system fed by gravity from the bottom of the pond through 4 inch diameter pipe to a 1000 gallon settling tank, followed by recirculating at a pond turnover per hour, and daily dumps of the settled solids, a 4 ppm PP dose typically goes through the purple and pink stages in less than an hour. And this is with treating with PP every 4 days, and without the complication of dechlorinators.

      Salt use has no effect on PP use, so if there is a parasite or fungal problem, combining PP use with salt helps with those issues.

      PP instantly oxidizes ammonia, a good thing if there is an ammonia issue. But if there is an ammonia issue, then running PP through the biofilter is not a good thing to do since biofiltration is already clearly inadequate for some reason. By “an ammonia issue”, I mean above 5 ppm ammonia. There is a huge technical misunderstanding of ammonia toxicity issues on this forum. Only the “unionized” form of ammonia is toxic to the fish. In the normal pH range of 7 to 8.5 in a koi pond, only a few % of the total ammonia content is in the toxic unionized form. And all test kits measure the total ammonia content, none of them measure the toxic unionized form. I have measured levels of total ammonia to typically be in the 5 to 10 ppm range for a month in a newly installed pond with plenty of big koi in it, and with all the koi doing well through development of the biofilter, and at a pH of 8.3 maintained with baking soda.

      In one of many published articles on the toxicity of unionized ammonia, the 96 hour LC50 (the concentration that kills half the fish in 4 days) is 0.93 ppm for carp (koi) calculated as unionized ammonia. Since the total ammonia is at least 20 times the concentration of unionized ammonia in the pH range of 7 to 8, that puts the concentration of total ammonia that can kill half your koi in 4 days at about 20 ppm, in agreement with my careful measurements of ammonia levels in actual local koi ponds while cycling the biofilter the first month. Typical levels without problems have been TAN or total ammonia nitrogen of 5 ppm. All the hysteria about total ammonia levels below 2 ppm makes absolutely no sense, but helps dealers make profits selling ammonia binders, which make the problem worse by causing longer times for the biofilter to cycle.
      stephen always goes wild disagreeing with me on this technical issue. Okay, that is his opinion based on something - no matter how many times I explain this issue, I never appear to be able to get the point across successfully.
      Last edited by Roddy Conrad; 07-05-2021 at 07:43 AM.
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    18. #58
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      Quote Originally Posted by Roddy Conrad View Post
      A primary problem with PP use is that the use of any dechlorinator complicates using PP, since if there is still an active dechlorinator present it will consume the PP. Dechlorinators generally only last a day or so after adding, so this is a special problem only for use of a dechlorinator recently. In the situation of dechlorinator present, successive PP doses will be needed until the dechlorinator has been all reacted away.

      Another issue is accumulation of “muck” on the bottom of the pond and/or in the filter system. At one point in my pond hobby, I had two ponds with lots of lovely water lilies and other pond plants. One of them had goldfish, the other had golden orders. In the Spring I would remove the plants to get the accumulated muck out, but on occasion would instead use an air pump and air stones to stir it up so PP could simply oxidize it away. I can easily judge PP concentration by water color, and would add a PP dose, 2 to 4 ppm, and watch the purple/pink color be consumed, and when it was gone, dose again. But that would require 16 to 20 successive doses, all in the same day, before the PP lasted more than a few minutes. I never killed a goldfish or golden orfe doing this, but do not advise others to try this on a heavy layer of muck. My point in describing that is to indicate the difficulty in PP use in anything but a fairly clean koi pond. Plants in the pond complicate koi keeping; I gave up trying to keep plants in a pond with koi about 20 years ago. My other experience is that big koi quickly destroy any plants within their reach.

      Even with my main filter system fed by gravity from the bottom of the pond through 4 inch diameter pipe to a 1000 gallon settling tank, followed by recirculating at a pond turnover per hour, and daily dumps of the settled solids, a 4 ppm PP dose typically goes through the purple and pink stages in less than an hour. And this is with treating with PP every 4 days, and without the complication of dechlorinators.

      Salt use has no effect on PP use, so if there is a parasite or fungal problem, combining PP use with salt helps with those issues.

      PP instantly oxidizes ammonia, a good thing if there is an ammonia issue. But if there is an ammonia issue, then running PP through the biofilter is not a good thing to do since biofiltration is already clearly inadequate for some reason. By “an ammonia issue”, I mean above 5 ppm ammonia. There is a huge technical misunderstanding of ammonia toxicity issues on this forum. Only the “unionized” form of ammonia is toxic to the fish. In the normal pH range of 7 to 8.5 in a koi pond, only a few % of the total ammonia content is in the toxic unionized form. And all test kits measure the total ammonia content, none of them measure the toxic unionized form. I have measured levels of total ammonia to typically be in the 5 to 10 ppm range for a month in a newly installed pond with plenty of big koi in it, and with all the koi doing well through development of the biofilter, and at a pH of 8.3 maintained with baking soda.

      stephen always goes wild disagreeing with me on this technical issue. Okay, that is his opinion based on something - no matter how many times I explain this issue, I never appear to be able to get the point across successfully.
      Hello Roddy:

      You have inspired me to use PP and I love it. Simple, universal, in-expensive and non-toxic. Almost too good to be true.

      The only thing is that I don´t wait until the pink color has completely gone, but whenever I see that the pink/violet color has obviously reduced I add 1 ppm more PP. So the PP concentration is always kept >1 ppm. I do the last addition after 4 hours.

      You said that some parasites like gill fluke will survive PP, therefore you also use formalin - MG. But for my part I don´t mind if I cannot kill off gill fluke completely, as what I have learnt is that it is impossible to keep a pond gill fluke-free for any longer time anyway. I am sure that PP for >4 hours must be able to kill a great number of gill fluke and keep the numer low.

      Forgot to mention one more good thing with PP: No parasites can develop resistance to it!
      Last edited by SimonW; 07-05-2021 at 06:24 AM.

    19. #59
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      Smile Don't Shoot Me I am only the Messenger

      By Syd Mitchell, UK - CKK Instructor

      Ask many koi keepers what level of ammonia there would be in a well managed koi pond and their answer will be: “Zero, of course”. But is that true?

      I cannot imagine a pond in which it is actually possible to achieve this value.

      Koi are ammonotelic. This is a fancy name for a living creature that eats protein and produces nitrogen as a waste product which is then excreted in the form of ammonia.
      OK, it’s no secret that koi excrete ammonia into their pond water, but do you know how much? A guide to the quantity of ammonia that is excreted by an active koi is 33 mg per hour per kilo of body weight. To put that a little more simply, a 1 kilogram koi will excrete almost 800 mg of ammonia into it’s pond each day. This is obviously only an approximation because it is dependent on diet and water temperature etc. but it is a surprising amount nonetheless.

      Few koi keepers will have any experience of pure ammonia. We also tend to think more in terms of body length than body mass. So it might make the ammonia output of koi easier to understand if we could stretch this example a little further by approximating body mass to length and if we also take into account that standard strength household ammonia is around 7.5%.

      Looking at it in this perspective, we could say that an average 20 inch (50 cm) koi, which will weigh about 2 kilograms, can easily excrete into it’s pond, the equivalent of over a teaspoonful of standard strength household ammonia every 12 hours. And that’s just one fish! Now think about your own pond and ask yourself the original question: What is the ammonia level in your pond?

      Clearly, as long as there are fish in it, the answer cannot be zero. There will always be some ammonia in the water because, no matter how fast is the turnover rate, it is impossible to instantaneously remove all that ammonia as quickly as it is being produced. The reason why many koi keepers believe they have a zero ammonia level in their pond is that a common method of testing for it is by adding a few drops of reagent to a sample of the water and then comparing the colour of that sample to a colour chart. Test kits based on this method are simply not sensitive enough to show very low levels and so it is natural to assume that no noticeable colour change means no ammonia.

      So, if we have to accept that there will always be a background level of ammonia in our ponds, how high can this level be before it becomes harmful? There is no direct answer to this question.

      When koi excrete ammonia into their pond, it breaks into two forms, free ammonia (NH3) and ionised ammonia (NH4). The proportions of each of these being dependent on pH and temperature, but it is only the free ammonia that is harmful. You will often hear that ammonia is more toxic at higher levels of pH and temperature. This is a simplification. At lower pH and temperatures, very little of the ammonia in the pond is in the free ammonia form, and therefore there is less of it to be toxic. As pH and temperatures increase, much more of the ammonia becomes free ammonia and so the toxic effects are greater. Free ammonia is just as nasty at low pH and temperatures. It’s just that there is far less of it.

      Scientists in the field of aquaculture have researched the effects of ammonia on fish and found that free ammonia levels below 0.02 mg/L were safe. Unfortunately, standard test kits and electronic meters cannot distinguish between free and ionised ammonia, they only measure total ammonia. As a result of this research, tables were produced where, by looking up your particular values of pH and temperature, the maximum safe value of total ammonia can be found. These tables are commonly reproduced, but they cover the full range of pH and temperatures that are found in ponds and aquaria of all types, not just koi ponds. This wider range means that there is less room for detail in the area needed by koi keepers. So, with due respect to the authors of these tables, I have gone back to the original scientific research and recalculated a new table that gives the maximum safe value for total ammonia in koi ponds and quarantine tanks. By confining the table to the range that is found in koi ponds and quarantine tanks, it is possible to give greater detail in this range. As with other tables, look up the pond pH on the left, and temperature at the top. The maximum tolerable total ammonia is shown where they intersect.



      In the two examples on the table, note the large difference in maximum tolerable value that is due to the increase in pH and temperature. The maximum tolerable value at the higher pH and temperature is about one sixth the first value. This is because, for any particular value of total ammonia, (as indicated by a test kit), six times as much of it will be in the toxic free ammonia form in the second example, so the maximum tolerable level of total ammonia has to be reduced proportionately. Now look up the maximum tolerable value if a quarantine tank at it’s top temperature of 30°C also has a high pH of 8.5. In this case, the maximum value of total ammonia is 0.09 mg/L. This is very difficult to achieve in practice. It should be borne in mind that, at this temperature, the koi’s metabolic rate will also be very high and so it’s ammonia output will be high as well. Resist any temptation to over feed at high temperatures when cycling a quarantine tank temperature up and down in order to trigger a latent disease such as KHV.
      That’s almost enough for one day, but before I let you go, one final point, and it is the most important one. It must be stressed that the values in the table above are maximum values. They are not targets. Whilst it is not possible to achieve a true zero value, it should be the aim of the koi keeper to achieve the lowest value that is possible, and to test regularly to ensure that this value is maintained.

      Acknowledgments

      Liao, Spotte, Timmons and Wheaton did the original research in the field of Recirculating Aquacultural Systems. It was from the graphs and data they produced that I was able to calculate the values in my table.
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      Quote Originally Posted by stephen View Post
      By Syd Mitchell, UK - CKK Instructor

      Ask many koi keepers what level of ammonia there would be in a well managed koi pond and their answer will be: “Zero, of course”. But is that true?

      I cannot imagine a pond in which it is actually possible to achieve this value.

      Koi are ammonotelic. This is a fancy name for a living creature that eats protein and produces nitrogen as a waste product which is then excreted in the form of ammonia.
      OK, it’s no secret that koi excrete ammonia into their pond water, but do you know how much? A guide to the quantity of ammonia that is excreted by an active koi is 33 mg per hour per kilo of body weight. To put that a little more simply, a 1 kilogram koi will excrete almost 800 mg of ammonia into it’s pond each day. This is obviously only an approximation because it is dependent on diet and water temperature etc. but it is a surprising amount nonetheless.

      Few koi keepers will have any experience of pure ammonia. We also tend to think more in terms of body length than body mass. So it might make the ammonia output of koi easier to understand if we could stretch this example a little further by approximating body mass to length and if we also take into account that standard strength household ammonia is around 7.5%.

      Looking at it in this perspective, we could say that an average 20 inch (50 cm) koi, which will weigh about 2 kilograms, can easily excrete into it’s pond, the equivalent of over a teaspoonful of standard strength household ammonia every 12 hours. And that’s just one fish! Now think about your own pond and ask yourself the original question: What is the ammonia level in your pond?

      Clearly, as long as there are fish in it, the answer cannot be zero. There will always be some ammonia in the water because, no matter how fast is the turnover rate, it is impossible to instantaneously remove all that ammonia as quickly as it is being produced. The reason why many koi keepers believe they have a zero ammonia level in their pond is that a common method of testing for it is by adding a few drops of reagent to a sample of the water and then comparing the colour of that sample to a colour chart. Test kits based on this method are simply not sensitive enough to show very low levels and so it is natural to assume that no noticeable colour change means no ammonia.

      So, if we have to accept that there will always be a background level of ammonia in our ponds, how high can this level be before it becomes harmful? There is no direct answer to this question.

      When koi excrete ammonia into their pond, it breaks into two forms, free ammonia (NH3) and ionised ammonia (NH4). The proportions of each of these being dependent on pH and temperature, but it is only the free ammonia that is harmful. You will often hear that ammonia is more toxic at higher levels of pH and temperature. This is a simplification. At lower pH and temperatures, very little of the ammonia in the pond is in the free ammonia form, and therefore there is less of it to be toxic. As pH and temperatures increase, much more of the ammonia becomes free ammonia and so the toxic effects are greater. Free ammonia is just as nasty at low pH and temperatures. It’s just that there is far less of it.

      Scientists in the field of aquaculture have researched the effects of ammonia on fish and found that free ammonia levels below 0.02 mg/L were safe. Unfortunately, standard test kits and electronic meters cannot distinguish between free and ionised ammonia, they only measure total ammonia. As a result of this research, tables were produced where, by looking up your particular values of pH and temperature, the maximum safe value of total ammonia can be found. These tables are commonly reproduced, but they cover the full range of pH and temperatures that are found in ponds and aquaria of all types, not just koi ponds. This wider range means that there is less room for detail in the area needed by koi keepers. So, with due respect to the authors of these tables, I have gone back to the original scientific research and recalculated a new table that gives the maximum safe value for total ammonia in koi ponds and quarantine tanks. By confining the table to the range that is found in koi ponds and quarantine tanks, it is possible to give greater detail in this range. As with other tables, look up the pond pH on the left, and temperature at the top. The maximum tolerable total ammonia is shown where they intersect.



      In the two examples on the table, note the large difference in maximum tolerable value that is due to the increase in pH and temperature. The maximum tolerable value at the higher pH and temperature is about one sixth the first value. This is because, for any particular value of total ammonia, (as indicated by a test kit), six times as much of it will be in the toxic free ammonia form in the second example, so the maximum tolerable level of total ammonia has to be reduced proportionately. Now look up the maximum tolerable value if a quarantine tank at it’s top temperature of 30°C also has a high pH of 8.5. In this case, the maximum value of total ammonia is 0.09 mg/L. This is very difficult to achieve in practice. It should be borne in mind that, at this temperature, the koi’s metabolic rate will also be very high and so it’s ammonia output will be high as well. Resist any temptation to over feed at high temperatures when cycling a quarantine tank temperature up and down in order to trigger a latent disease such as KHV.
      That’s almost enough for one day, but before I let you go, one final point, and it is the most important one. It must be stressed that the values in the table above are maximum values. They are not targets. Whilst it is not possible to achieve a true zero value, it should be the aim of the koi keeper to achieve the lowest value that is possible, and to test regularly to ensure that this value is maintained.

      Acknowledgments

      Liao, Spotte, Timmons and Wheaton did the original research in the field of Recirculating Aquacultural Systems. It was from the graphs and data they produced that I was able to calculate the values in my table.
      Also the chart provided is the correct one for carp. And the one in the calculator section for ammonia should be removed and replaced with this one.

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