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  1. #41
    Extreme Koi Member Rank = Supreme Champion Frimley Koi keeper's Avatar
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    Sounds like you have got it all covered, nice one.

    It was just a thought after reading Syd's website as he is very knowledgeable with all things like this isn't he.

    Sometimes you can often overlook the simple things and another person's suggestion can be a urecka moment. Unfortunately not this time.

    What are your next steps?

  2. #42
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    I'd certainly say that not following those instructions on the first bucket experiments affected the speed of ammonia/nitrite consumption.

    You may have seen my other thread where I cannot get rid of nitrite from the pond. That problem is ongoing so hopefully once this new K1 is converting at a high rate I'll drop it into the Nexus and see if it fixes the problem.

    If successful it will be tempting to fishless cycle media in the garage ready for increased feeding in the spring.

    Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

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  4. #43
    Extreme Koi Member Rank = Supreme Champion Frimley Koi keeper's Avatar
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    It's all a very big learning curve at times isn't it?

    Yes I think I have seen your other thread.

    I hope you get to the bottom of your current nitrite problems ASAP and hope it sorts your pond out too with what you learn here.

  5. #44
    Just to clarify why I suggested using an air stone and regular additions of sodium bicarbonate in my fishless cycling article.

    In order to convert a single molecule of ammonia through nitrite and into nitrate requires four atoms of oxygen and seven molecules of carbonate!

    If the oxygen depletes then the maturation process will go slower and slower until it stops dead. If the carbonate brought in by water changes or from the sodium bicarbonate runs out, not only will the maturation process stop dead but the pH will reduce rapidly, as you have already found, and probably crash which will kill any bacteria that had already grown. Water changes from hard water supplies or adding sodium bicarbonate regularly is very necessary.

    The air stone I suggested not only supplies the oxygen but will give a gentle stirring action to keep everything mixed and circulating over all the media in the container. A spray of water over the surface will aerate the surface but it won't guarantee to aerate and circulate the water deeper down.

    Eureka???
    Last edited by Manky Sanke; 11-09-2018 at 08:14 PM.

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  7. #45
    Extreme Koi Member Rank = Supreme Champion Frimley Koi keeper's Avatar
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    Nice one Syd, just proves I hadn't miss read your instructions after all.

    Been one of those days LOL

  8. #46
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Thanks for the clarification Syd.

    Interestingly, my KH and GH have stayed reasonably constant throughout these experiments, only dropping marginally from 12dH and 16dH to 10dH and 13dH respectively.

    In my case the jets of water from the filter are powerful enough to keep all the water well aerated - Its a 1200 LPH filter circulating and spraying into a 40 litre bucket of water! Early indications are that its working very well, but due to the large volume of media and constant dosages of ammonia, the maintenance through water changes is very high. I reckon if I missed changing water for a single day things would start going wrong.

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  10. #47
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Day 5:
    The 5 ppm ammonia added yesterday was completely consumed by late last night and fully converted to nitrAtes. Dosed again to 3ppm which was fully consumed by this morning. Changed water and dosed 5ppm this morning and just re-tested and again, Ammonia = 0 and Nitrites = 0.

    It is being consumed at such a rapid rate that I'm now removing all media from the mature filter and replacing it with new K1. That should slow things down a bit. I'll drop that mature media into the pond even though its not likely to be enough to make any meaningful improvement to parameters.
    Last edited by RS2OOO; 12-09-2018 at 05:59 PM.

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  12. #48
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Day 6: Having removed all mature media yesterday leaving just the new K1, I was surprised to get zero ammonia/nitrite readings this morning so I changed water and dosed back up to 4ppm ammonia.

    This afternoon Ammonia is already back to zero and nitrites at 0.5 ppm and dropping fast.

    This is 6 day old K1, can it really be colonised in such a fast time?

    Is it ready to put in the Nexus?

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  14. #49
    perhaps the container has a good bio film

  15. #50
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by familyman View Post
    perhaps the container has a good bio film
    The bucket was bone dry out of the shed when I started.

    The canister filter pipes do however have a very thick biofilm, the filter has been in constant use for over 12 years. But if it was only the biofilm in those pipes consuming all this ammonia, then one would start to question why you'd need 50+ litres of K1 to control a pond. The bottom drain pipe alone would be adequate to house vast numbers of bacteria.

    I put the mature media from the canister filter into the pond yesterday (5 litres), but it made no difference to pond nitrite levels.

    In total there is 27kg of mature media in the pond and nexus in addition to 65 litres of K1 (which is now 5 Months old), and nitrites still wont go below 1 mg/l. There are only 8 small Koi in there feeding on just 115 grammes of food per Week.

    In the 40 litre bucket however, nitrites go from 5 ppm to 0 ppm in just 6-8 hours..

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  17. #51
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    Quote Originally Posted by RS2OOO View Post
    In total there is 27kg of mature media in the pond and nexus in addition to 65 litres of K1 (which is now 5 Months old), and nitrites still wont go below 1 mg/l. There are only 8 small Koi in there feeding on just 115 grammes of food per Week.

    In the 40 litre bucket however, nitrites go from 5 ppm to 0 ppm in just 6-8 hours..
    Do you mean 115 grams a week or a day?

    Correct me if I'm wrong here but if you only have 8 small koi in your pond and have a large amount of media then with that amount of feeding could it not be a case of not enough constant loading on your media to keep the bacteria going? It's kind of like having a city with 10 million people living in it but only having enough food to feed 10 thousand people. It won't take long for a lot of the population of that city to starve to death. Is it possible that that is what's happening in your filters with the bacteria? There's enough Ammonia to get the process started but not enough to keep it going properly?

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  19. #52
    Extreme Koi Member Rank = Supreme Champion Davej's Avatar
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    Ok an "off the wall" suggestion.

    I have seen it with pop up swimming pools that Guys have used to hold Koi. The material is treated with a fungicide that takes some shifting.

    I recall seeing a video of your fish and did find it a little surprising there wasn't any green tinge on the walls?

    Just thinking "outside the box" as to why the filters / pond is slow in maturing...

    Which liner did you use?

    Dave

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  21. #53
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Hi Frimley,

    Yes, just 115 grammes of pellets a week at the moment, possibly closer to 150 grammes accounting for treats etc.

    EA gave similar advice (albeit nowhere near as elequently), so I reduced the media down to just 25 litres, but over the following 6 weeks I struggled to keep nitrites below 2ppm so I put the rest of the media back in and nitrites dropped back again to 1-1.5 ppm.

    Maybe I should have given it more time but a constant 2 ppm was taking its toll on the koi.

    Even when I stopped feeding for a week the nitrites didn't go down, and when I increased feeding again they went up for a few days.

    Thing is with the 10,000 analogy, logic says that if there's a constant 1.5mg/l of nitrite spread throughout the system then wouldn't that mean there's a constant food source for nitrobacter?


    Hi Dave,
    The liner is 1mm EPDM. It does have a slime coat of mainly brown algae with some greenish patches, but certainly no signs of string algae or blanket weed.

    Interestingly my fish tanks all have brown algae, I can never get green algae to grow regardless of lighting etc. The pond however did go through a pea soup green phase a couple of times in the first couple of months before it all turned brown.

    The pond is in full sun light all day


    EDIT: Here's that video again. The Liner is black so there is a tinge on the walls, but its more slimy brown than furry green. My Goldfish tanks are exactly the same (if I don't clean the glass). Pea green water and algae growth is desirable to enhance Goldfish colours but I've never been able to achieve it, always the horrible brown stuff and the pond is the same. Assume its to do with the tap water.

    Looking back at this video taken 2 Months ago - The Koi have definitely grown some since then!



    Direct link for Tapatalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx1f-AO8wz4
    Last edited by RS2OOO; 13-09-2018 at 11:01 PM.

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  23. #54
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    Quote Originally Posted by RS2OOO View Post
    Thing is with the 10,000 analogy, logic says that if there's a constant 1.5mg/l of nitrite spread throughout the system then wouldn't that mean there's a constant food source for nitrobacter?
    The 10,000 analogy is a bit like this I would think just not sure if it directly works with bacteria -

    If you have 10'000'000 people and they all want to have enough to eat you need 10'000'000 meals 3 times a day or something along those lines OK but if you only have enough meals for 10'000 people to have 3 meals a day and you have to spread that out between 10'000'000 people each person gets 1 chip, a couple of peas and slice of sausage each 3 times a day if they are lucky and the food spreads that far, well that's if it's being shared out evenly. But if the first 10'000 people consider themselves to be far more important than the rest and help themselves, the remaining people have virtually nothing but the scraps to fight over. Basically survival of the fittest if you like.

    Is it a case of if there is enough Ammonia being produced to support around 10 million Nitrosomonas to convert that Ammonia into Nitrite that you need around 10 million Nitrobacter to then convert Nitrite into Nitrate? OK the actual numbers can vary by + or - 10% for arguments sake then the Nitrogen cycle works as it should, but if the 10 million Nitrosomonas get starved of Ammonia for too long their number start dropping and it has a knock on effect on the Nitrobacter and that's why you can get zero Ammonia readings but high Nitrite readings on a matured filter and pond?

    I understand the basics of how the Nitrogen cycle works but not the real nuts and bolts of it.

    That's why I'm thinking not enough load on your filters to keep them going and why the bucket experiment works but as you've found out not in every case, you still have to get the ratios right don't you?

  24. #55
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Love that post Frimley. As soon as you mentioned sausages I knew you'd simplified enough to reach my level of intelligence.

    If your second paragraph is correct (Syd?), then yes, this could well be a major factor.

    The only other spanner in the works is that when I last tested Pond ammonia on 1st September it was 0.25 ppm. Tested again today and its 0.1 ppm. Who knows whether these are constant or just happened to be on the days I've tested (as ammonia was 0 in all tests between mid July and 20th August), but at the moment the indication is that there is both ammonia and nitrite (1 ppm today) present.

    Pond Paramaters as of 5 mins ago:

    Ammonia 0.1
    Nitrite 1
    Nitrates 80+
    PH 8.2
    KH 10 drops.

    All those Nitrates mean there is definitely some level of cycle going on as nitrates were only 20 ppm prior to 20% water change last Sunday. Tap water is 10 ppm.


    Bucket Experiment:

    Day 6: Dosed 5ppm ammonia this morning at 7am. Tested just now (17:30) and still showing 1ppm ammonia and 1ppm nitrite. So removing all mature media has indeed slowed down the consumption to a more manageable level.

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  26. #56
    Extreme Koi Member Rank = Supreme Champion Frimley Koi keeper's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by RS2OOO View Post
    Love that post Frimley. As soon as you mentioned sausages I knew you'd simplified enough to reach my level of intelligence.
    It was way above mine as I had to look up some of the bigger words LOL

    Thing is does it help in any way? Even if it helps rule something else out it's of some help isn't it?

  27. #57
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    The idea helps in theory Frimley and your explanation makes it appear viable, but in reality I really don't know!

    As mentioned, I did remove media from the Nexus (50l to 25l) and over 6 weeks parameters were worse instead of better, and then most of the advice I received was that I needed more media, not less, so I bought more media, and then I bought even more, but again, some days parameters were better but on others they weren't.

    Its effort but what I could do is remove all media from the pond, every single piece, and then replace it with the 15 litres that's currently fishless cycling and see what happens.

    Will I actually do that? I don't know. If I was certain it would work, yes I would. But I'm also frightened of getting it wrong and having an even bigger nitrite problem throughout winter that cannot be resolved.

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  29. #58
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    Looks like a bit of a tricky one.

    Be good to see how things go before the temperature drops too much as you say.

  30. #59
    Senior Member Rank = Supreme Champion RS2OOO's Avatar
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    Day 10:
    This is 5 days after removing the old mature media from the pressure filter and replacing it with new K1, leaving nothing but new media in the bucket and in the pressure filter that is solely in place to keep the water moving and aerated.

    Over the last few days the ammonia consumption has increased dramatically to the extent that I've been adding up to 6ml of 20% concentration ammonia daily (across multiple doses 2-3ml at a time) and within 4-5 hours there are no traces of ammonia and within 7 hours no traces of nitrite.

    Today's pond nitrites are 2 mg/l and ammonia is 0.2 mg/l. My largest Koi is off food with fins clamped and flashing which has occurred on previous occasions when nitrites got above 1.5 mg/l. Accounting for the previous conversation with Frimley, this evening I've done something I really hope I don't end up regretting!

    I removed all media from the pond; 60 litres of K1 and 25 kg of alfagrog (I left 2 kg behind that hangs in a mesh bag over the pond air stone).

    I then gradually temperature and PH matched the 15 litres of K1 from the bucket and poured it into the nexus.


    I'm extremely worried about this not working and the effect on the Koi. Might have been more sensible to do it when I'm not leaving for work at 6am the following morning!

    Maths isn't my strong point but I think 0.2mg/l in a 7000 litre pond = 1.4 ml of ammonia. The bucket experiment is consuming 1.2 ml of pure ammonia per day, therefore in theory the pond ammonia level should be thereabouts zero by morning.

    As for nitrites, no idea how to calculate it because I suppose 1 mg/l of ammonia probably doesn't convert to 1 mg/l of nitrite! Nonetheless at 2 ppm, the pond contains 14 ml of nitrites so this will likely take a few days to shift............

    ................If this actually works.

    I've tried everything and nothing has worked so far so hopes are not high, and I'm a little concerned for the Koi.
    Last edited by RS2OOO; 18-09-2018 at 07:12 PM.

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  32. #60
    Extreme Koi Member Rank = Supreme Champion Frimley Koi keeper's Avatar
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    It looks like an early morning for you tomorrow to check on the Ammonia and Nitrite levels before work?

    Fingers crossed for you as I hope it works too.

    Good luck.

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