Hi Kevin, just been
reading Ardy's build and something worries me...with using Zeolite and it
absorbing all the ammonia if for any reason he had to add salt (as I do from
time to time) all the absorbed ammonia would be released into the water which would
be bad!! I was wondering if he knows salt would be a bad thing now. Its great
the anoxic is catching on got a feeling it might snowball :)
Brian
Thanks Brian for the
heads-up!
Salt is used as a recharging
agent for Zeolite. I completely forgot about Sodium chloride (salt) as a
recharging agent because I do not use salt in my pond nor do I use Zeolite.
Read my post about salt: http://drklnovak.blogspot.com/2013/06/salt-and-cyprinus-carpio-carassius.html
Read what Duncan has written about salt in much greater detail, click
below.
Sodium chloride is a Band-Aid
for incompetent filtration system if you have to use it to make Nitrites less
toxic to Koi, then something is not right with your filter. Understanding that
in springtime the use of salt may be more acceptable than other times of the
year as a new filter is cycling but as an all-time prophylactic I would not
recommend it.
As we all know most pond
hobbyist use salt as a medication and I hope Andy knows that may not be an
option for him. However, if the Biocenosis baskets are mature and the
facultative bacterium is active then salt would not release anything from the
Zeolite. Much like that of cat litter that has a crystalline structure too like
that of Zeolite the bacteria would just use the available Ammonium ion as a
food source so it would keep attracting more ammonia out of solution and never
become exhausted like that of cat litter.
If you think about it how could
the Biocenosis baskets keep attracting the ammonia/ammonium out of a solution
without becoming at some point exhausted within a shot time instead of lasting
ten years or longer? There is constantly and exchange going on inside the
Biocenosis baskets at all times. One ion is being exchanged for another ion and
in the end N2 is the byproduct of the bacteria in the media.
Once the Biocenosis baskets are
seasoned it would be interesting to see through a simple experiment if salt
would release any of the trapped ammonia ion back into solution. By taking a Zeolite
Biocenosis basket and placing it into a bucket with some salt in it at the same
concentration most hobbyist would use in their ponds. Then with an Ammonia test
kit, test the results. Definitely this would be an interesting experiment.
Anoxic Filtration System ®
February 02-2005-2013
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