No chemicals added. L

No chemicals added.

Here is a little write-up from Brian Woodcock in the UK. 

Last years AFS when new.

The page photo shows the number of views his Anoxic Filter Build has taken in on a UK Koi forum (user name: brian1962), in just over a year of posting; a whopping 32,889 views.

  It is a shame so many here in the good old US of A are so dissident about anything they don’t understand or refuse to understand. I know that the AFS is not for everyone and it may not be the filtration system that does everything for everybody, but then again what filter does. Let face facts, if there were a perfect filter out there then everyone would be using it without question, but there isn’t!

The menagerie of filtration systems is a plethora of confusion to the novice pond owner that it’s laterally mind-boggling when you think about it.  Each one has their crosshair on you to get their product into your hands. Beautiful color ads and hobbyist barkers that already use their goods selling you the idea of everlasting nirvana. However, in the long run the money never stops and the problems never really guest go away for very long, do they? Then the next volley of goods to be sold to you is thrown at you, like baseballs in a batting cage.

In fact, this year I saw this happen to hobbyists that where convinced that they would be better off with an expensive bead filter that they had to house it in a new shed, with a UV filter that looked like it was on steroids, like something from the movie Forbidden Planet.  Yet their pond was still green and Koi were still small and sparingly feed in fear of making their pond even greener. The guy that sold them all the equipment could care less if they succeeded or not, because he’s made his money.

 Then they were told that the pump they had was no good and they would have to buy a better one, by some other hobbyist visiting.  But the one thing I notice was that they were actually proud of all the equipment they had now and were more than happy to show it off.

Yes, that exactly what I want in my backyard is a shed full pond filters and equipment and still have a turbid pond.

 Now a word from Brian:

As for water quality ...Ammonia has been zero all year, had a little stubborn nitrite (0.20) for a few weeks, which annoyed me, and I never found the cause probably over feeding. Nitrate has been 30-ppm as I’m trickling 6-700 gallon of 20-ppm source water a week and still have my bead filter, which will be producing nitrates.

As for feeding, my fish get 400g over 6 feeding apart for some low nitrites early on in the year. Nothing seems to have phased my AFS filter, (31 fish some to 75 cm = 29" US) all in all a good year with good growth this year as with last year my fish have been parasite and problem free so no chemicals added.

Thanks for looking Brian

 

This is August last year

And this is today!