K1 Kaldness Media - 10mm x 7mm
 

Krakens Aquarium now carrying Kaldness media!

What is K1 Media?
Developed by Professor Halvard Odergard, Kaldness Moving Bed Bio film process has been designed specifically to create the most effective environment for nitrification process to take place. The media is engineered in a wheel shape and is slightly positively buoyant, allowing a small amount of water flow (created by adding air to the process) to circulate the media throughout the vessel.

http://www.koi-expert.fr/media/images/org/Kaldnes.jpg

You can get them at K1 Kaldness Media

I will vouch for these as I used them for 5+ years. They are very efficient, the next gen of bio filtration. I would put 25 boxes of Bali fish into my system and not even see an ammonia or nitrite spike.

Cheers,
Tim

Hey Tim, I was thinking about putting some marine pure biospheres in the tank since my rock work is very simplistic. I don't think I will have too much bioload as far as fish goes, do you think this product would be a better choice?

Thanks Rich

Yeah, these are awesome on fish only systems! These are like BioBalls on steroids.

Hi Rich,

The two products do somewhat different jobs. The Kaldnes is just for aerobic biological filtration while the biospheres apparently reduce nitrate anaerobically as well as the aerobic bio filtration.

The Kaldnes is the best option for biological filtration as it is the most efficient and then the nitrate/phosphate can be neutralized using vinegar/vodka. The advantage of the Kaldnes media bed is that it does not deplete the oxygen level in the water due to it being in a liquified bed.

I would save my money and go with the Kaldnes media.

Cheers,
Tim

I know that this is really popular in the discus and koi hobby. Most people make small air driven pop bottle filters in there discus tanks or put large amounts in sumps with a ton of air to keep it churning and because its so effective it can bring o2 levels lower so alot of air from an airstone is key with large amounts. Once again this is all from the freshwater hobby. This is the first i have heard of it being used in the saltwater hobby but it very well could be used by lots of reefers. I believe it comes in a couple different sizes and was originally developed in germany (i think?) For large scale water treatment plants. If you do a quick google or youtube search you can see tons of the air driven pop bottle filters or sumps.

I am by no means an expert so id do your own research before taking my word as gospel.

As you can see I have seen conflicting info that says it will deplete o2 levels. I have not tested it myself just from what i have read on simplydiscus.

Agreed and these have the ability to not be sludge/detritus traps too.

It depends on how you implement them. If you have an airline/airstone bubbling in a modified 2 liter pop bottle then it is possible. The method I recommend for hobbyists to implement these would be in a filter sock that has all the water from the overflow flowing through it. Ideally there should be enough water in the filter sock for the incoming water to create a liquified bed for the Kaldnes.

Cheers,
Tim

If you run a protein skimmer, I really doubt there will be an O2 issue tbh. But in my case I have a 72" tall skimmer so :mrgreen:

Filling a filter sock with k1 would be a great idea. Easy, contained, tons of churning, and most people implement filter socks. Thanks for the suggestion.

Glad to help. I have set up a few tanks that way and it works well. I tried a lot of different methods to make the Kaldnes move and pounding water into the bed is the most efficient method from a performance point of view.

Im actually running my 2000g tank purely off the media so it works quite well considering my parameters are perfect =D

yea there is no disputing how truly effective it is.

Are you running it in a huge sump or in barrels. I have seen videos of people using it in large 55 gal drums.

How much of the media are you running for the 2000g

I am really thinking of using this in my tank within the 2 large filter socks.

Im using barrels right now but will be redoing my filtration once my poly tanks arrive. Im not 100% sure how much k1 I have in the barrel but its around 50 litres cause ive been taking out k1 from one barrel to seed new tanks as I finish putting my store together.

So how do these work ? where in the sump should they be placed ?

Heyo! So the fun part of using the kaldness media is that there are many different ways of implementing it into your system. You can use the pop bottle method which is a simply diy project or you can get a dedicated reactor for it. As mentioned before in this thread you can also just put them into your filter sock from your return. The possibilites are endless and it depends on your unique setup

I used to use this back in my cichlid days, just ordered 10 liters to play with in my current systems