The Use Of Beneficial Bacteria For Water Quality Control In Koi Ponds (Bio-Augmentation) BY
FERNANDO IBANEZ |
Throughout the years that I have been involved in the aquaculture industry, one of the problems I have seen with the greatest impact on the health and well being of fish, whether koi, ornamentals or food fish, has been the problem of maintaining good water quality of the pond, tank or reservoir where the fish are kept. We know that there are three major components or contributors to good healthy koi: environment, feed and low exposure to infecting organisms that can produce disease. It is very important to maintain a balance of these three components if we want to enjoy our fish for a long time. When speaking about environment I refer to all the physical and chemical conditions of the pond. Feed is the specific nutritional requirements of fish and low exposure to disease is the prevention of foreign organisms that at one point can infect and damage or kill precious and expensive fish. If one is to maintain only two of these components in good operation but one is deficient, for example food quality and quantity is appropriate and the exposure to dangerous organisms is very low, the fish will possibly be stressed and barely surviving. In contrast, if we don’t have control over two of these components we will experience heavy losses and difficulties. In this article I will deal with the problem of water quality and specifically with the use of bacterial products that can help us maintain better water quality in an inexpensive and almost effortless manner. We all know that when we maintain fish in closed re-circulation systems, with very little water exchange, water deterioration will occur with time. This occurs more so with constant addition of nutrients through feed, run off, leaves and other materials that can fall in the pond. All these contribute to the decomposition of organic mater and as it dissolves in the water or is consumed by the fish, it is subsequently metabolized. This process results in settable and un-settable solids, nitrogen compounds and phosphorous compounds that create an accumulation of organic material and toxic chemicals. In addition to the fish, algae, bacteria and other microorganisms begin to grow and multiply rapidly using this material as food. The organic material accumulates and the chemicals such as ammonia and nitrites soon surpass toxic levels, especially as the density increases due to growth or addition of more fish to the pond. High concentration of these nutrients will favor the development of massive blooms of algae that not only affect the transparency of the water in a negative way but also can reach such numbers that will contribute to massive “die-offs” depleting all the oxygen available and causing high mortalities. This high concentration of nutrients can also contribute to the development of filamentous algae that will soon cover rocks sidewalls and can even get into the pipes, pumps and filtering systems rendering them useless or less efficient. The use of beneficial bacteria populations that can decompose organic sludge as well as bacteria that can convert ammonia and nitrites into nitrates, reduce BOD (biochemical oxygen demand), bind excess phosphates, prevents algal blooms and maintains a microbiological equilibrium in the pond. This process has been studied for many years in the water treatment industry and recently has been introduced in aquaculture with very encouraging results. For the koi enthusiast it is important to make sure that all of these functions are performed in the pond and unfortunately the commercial manufactures of these products have failed to make a complete source of all the bacteria needed for good water quality maintenance. When looking for a product that can accomplish all of the above make
sure it contains the following list of bacterial types: |