Hi all,
While I was looking at the RAS and Archaea references I came upon this paper Khangembam et al. (2017) <"Diversity and Abundance of Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria and Archaea in a Freshwater Recirculating Aquaculture System"> HAYATI Journal of Biosciences 24:4 pp. 215-220.
It didn't add much new to the debate, but I thought this bit was quite interesting.
While I was looking at the RAS and Archaea references I came upon this paper Khangembam et al. (2017) <"Diversity and Abundance of Ammonia-Oxidizing Bacteria and Archaea in a Freshwater Recirculating Aquaculture System"> HAYATI Journal of Biosciences 24:4 pp. 215-220.
It didn't add much new to the debate, but I thought this bit was quite interesting.
cheers DarrelThe selection of proper substrate for biofilter is the next critical step as it influences the efficiency of water treatment and operational cost (Summerfelt 2006). A perfect biofilter should be easily available, non-poisonous, non-reactive and cost-effective. It should remove all the nitrogenous metabolites from the effluent and support the growth of dense populations of nitrifying microbes. ........... The static bed filter has been used in the present study. A wide variety of substrates viz. rocks, shells, sand, corals, ceramic, expanded clay, plastic bio balls, etc. are commercially available as biofilter substrates (Malone and Pfeiffer, 2006). Replacement of such commercial products with traditional materials will significantly reduce the operational cost of the recirculating system. In the present study, broken earthen pot pieces (BEP) are used as filter bed material. The capability of these pieces to support the growth of ammonia-oxidizing microbes has been evaluated using amoA gene as marker.......In the filtration unit, a 20-cm thick layer of BEP (7 × 3.5 cm) were used as substratum for the growth of microorganisms. These BEP are easily available, indigenous, cheaper and non-toxic to fish. These are porous in nature with large surface area which facilitates the growth of microbes.