Did you know that air can help remove ammonia?

And you thought you could never have too much oxygen in a Koi pond.

Quite recently the Brits justified their contribution to the Koi world with an interesting study...

Removing ammonia from Koi ponds using nothing but fresh air...

The British are devout Koi fanatics - of that there can be no doubt. A recent study has show that up to 50% of ammonia can be driven out of a pond within a 48 hour time frame using nothing but vigorous aeration.

This is great news. Strongly aerating your Koi pond has obvious benefits for your Koi, your biological filter (bacteria) system (which are oxygen users) and now it has attendant benefits in helping to drive off ammonia.

Note that such aeration is more effective when the pond water is circulated through an aeration tank. Surface aeration is useful for increasing dissolved oxygen levels nearer to the surface, but bubbling the whole pond through an aerated vessel by turning the entire pond volume through the vessel is far more efficient. This is because all the pond volume is intimately contacted with the aeration bubbles and it is the oxygen that causes a reaction with the ammonia, reducing it to free nitrogen,

Note that aeration is not a certain cure for removing all ammonia. Firstly the reaction process is slow. Secondly as the concentration of ammonia drops the reaction slows down. BUT, for curing ammonia spikes this is great news. And any on going reduction of ammonia by aeration means that there is less work for the bio filter to do.

Don't make the mistake of specifying a smaller bio filter though. Remember the golden rule - you can never have enough filtration, only too little. Whilst removing ammonia via aeration in a Koi pond is a brilliant and good thing to know about, it cannot be relied on solely. It is useful to know for those hot summer months however.

This is also just one more of the explanations of why aerating your bio filter is such a good idea. It operates under exactly these conditions, and not only are the good bacteria exposed to masses of oxygen, but some of their work is being done for them by the agitation of the media by air.

I guess the slogan for this page has to be "blow, baby blow"! And you know which pumps blow better than any others don't you?