Moving Bed Biomedia

[Conrad Chin-Yee]

Has anyone used the following media, or done business with this company? If you have, what was your experience with the media and the company?

http://www.w-m-t.com/Products/WaterTek_MB3_Moving_Bed_Media.php

Conrad

[Neale McQuoid]

Hi Conrad,

 

I'm new to aquaponics but I have been doing a lot of research and I have read other aquaponic forums on the issue of moving bed media. This MB3 looks similar to Kaldnes K1 and on the link above it says it performed well against K1 in tests. I know that other aquaponicists highly recommend K1 and moving bed filtration in general. So, if MB3 is as good as K1, is made in the US (and you're American), and its price is better than K1, I would buy it. Does that help?

[Conrad Chin-Yee]

Neale,

Im afraid that its your call. I decided to buy MB3 as it is similar and is suppose to perform better. 

 The stuff that I bought isn't boiling yet and I don't know why. I put it in a 55 gallon barrel with an air stone. It may be due to my failure to prepare the media first by boiling it as so have suggested that you do. I was also told that the media needs to develop biofilm and bacteria which makes it denser  and so able to sink. I thought that the failure may be due to not enough air in the filter so I bought a big expensive Hakko 80 but haven't yet hooked it up as the hook up procedure seems a bit complicated. From my reading It appears that I need to get two 12 outlet manifolds and somehow hook these up. 

 

 

 

[Conrad Chin-Yee]

Neale,

Here is a link that may help you

http://www.shortypen.com/projects/pond/design/index.htm

[Burton]

Found this today while doing research into MBF as I want to make a system where by if I dont have any plants I will be ok. This would mean having a bypass on the GB to a filter then eventually to a MBF. 

Comparison of most MBF types.
http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showthread.php?122875-Media-Comparison 

What is important is knowing the constants for k1 50L supports 0.250kg of feed a day. From here you have to reverse engineer the amount of fish it can support based on your feed rate. Assuming your only using K1 and not a MB.

Assuming 1% feed rate then you can stock a tank with 25kg(55lbs) of fish, at 2% its 12.5(27.5lbs) (see pattern yet?) 

50L of K1 requires 100L of water to move in or at minimal 90L of water.  

Here is some perspective. GB : FT area is at least 1:1 if not 2:1 ... people are using pea gravel in some beds which averages 96 SSA ... with a 1:1 ratio and 1000L FT (264g or 35.3ft^2) we can assume the bio filter SSA total size is at least 3388.8 sqft ... 

K1 can do 259 sqft / cuft (SSA) so the same bio filter would have a size of 13.08 cuft or 97.86 gallons or 368L according to the Kaldnes that would support 7.36 more than the feed rates above or feeding 1% = 1.84kg(4lbs) a day with 400lbs of fix >_br/>
That stated the bed size is important only to remove nitrates from the system and isn't necessarily needed for the bio filter   

If I am wrong please correct me but it seems if someone did an experiment with the above numbers using 1.8 cu ft of pea gravel as a bio filter with eb&flow with some type of solids filter and NTF... The link Chin-Yee provided shows a 300g koi tank with a 5 gallon bucket half full of K1 media for its only filter (granted this needs to be cleaned)