Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm planning a commercial system here in Thailand with a mechanical drum filter and a moving bed filter.

However, the Kaldnes K1 is not available in Thailand so I was planning on importing a replica from China, there is plenty on Alibaba.

However, I have never used this stuff before and it comes in several sizes. Does anybody know which size is best suited to aquaponics or is it pretty much much of a muchness?

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/60662 ... media.html

Cheers,

Tom.

Its all same, same. K1 has a 800:1 surface area. The largest of all media's.

Ah, that makes it easy!!!

Thank you Charlie.

Unfortunately, not all the K1 and their rip offs are the same. Some users of the cheaper Chinese variants found they destruct/break down over time (literally a couple of years). I've never heard anyone complaining that genuine K1 has done the same.

There are quite a lot of filter media with much higher specific surface areas than 800m2 per m3, but they are prohibitively expensive to use as a GB media, so could really only ever be used in a biofiltration unit.

[edit] P.S. Check the minimum order size too....

With Kaldnes you can get K1 and K3. The K1 is about the size of your small fingernail and K3 is much larger. All the people I know use the K1.

I have found if you use too much it tends to pack up and you dont get that nice rolling motion. I have seen a figure of 40% but in my experience I would only use 20-25% volume. Also it takes about a week to work properly. When new it wants to float on top, then it turns light brown and be have neautral bouancy.

Just make sure you use some guard material on the water exit, they are great escape artists.

From memory Frank successfully made one using PE or PP pellets. I made one using bottle caps but it did not move round much.