Unfortunally, we did not get the tanks all moved yesterday and after a night of heavy rain, the guys came into a very wet and muddy farm with this morning.  The wind is adding to the not ideal conditions to be moving these large tanks. But, we can’t go onto a third day of rental, so the job had to be done.

Yes, Mat is talking on his cell to a customer while running the machine! 

Our new greenhouse, which does not call for them,  is planned to go up right where these tanks are sitting.

To move these large tanks required us to rent a large crane to move them – no, nothing here is easy!

I was on the phone when i looked out my window and saw a large tank in the air..i yelled i had to run and my customer yelled “GRAB THE CAMARA!”

The tanks are being moved the the opposite side of the farm, near the Turnpike.  They are planned to stay there and in the future be used as winter storage for our small tosai that have to spend the winter in the mud ponds.

The pictures below show how we are using lexan for our jump out protections.  By using this clear material, the koi will be easily viewed by customers.

Chuck is bending the lexan for smooth corners

In the situation of a farm/ dealer, we have to take consideration the abuse our liners go thru each year. Koi are taken in and out of these ponds with hand nets and seine nets multiple of times. Each time we catch the koi there is risk of hitting the liner and damaging it and with our greenhouses filled to the max with koi, there is no easy way to move the koi out of the pond to fix a problem.

With this in mind we decided to use a spray on liner. Spray liners, but by different applicators over the years, have been used on ponds in our other greenhouses over the years.

Unfortunately, due to a terrible application of the liner this time the liner did not stand the test

When the liner was first applied and the pond was filled, the ponds leaked. The applicator returned to the farm to re-spray the pond.  The applicator went cheap on the second spray and the only placed a thin layer over top the first failed layer.

As seen in the pictures, most spots weren’t even a thick as a piece of paper.

The liners delaminated from each other, making the liner no longer water proof. When contacting the applier with our issues, he is no longer in business and is unable to help us at this time.

Our option now is to cut the liner out of the pond, re- prep the pond and fiberglass the pond.

This type of poor work not only cost us a full season with 40,000 gallons unusable, but $50,000 of a failed liner.

To make the skimmer’s separation plate, a template and rotozip are used to make the slots in a stainless steel plate for water flow

 -Although it looks like Mat is hard at work, he is actually showing James what needs to be done and James spend the next few hours carefully cutting the slots into the plates.

One of the fnished skimmer plates:

A few years ago we invested in six 2250 gal fiberglass tanks for an off site project. This project was not able to be completed and the tanks have been waiting to be incorporated into a full system since then.

Over the last 20+ years, Mat has been designing and building filter systems and for the last 10 years have utilized Kaldness K1 as his main bio media with various different mechanical separation techniques prior the kaldness chamber.

This experience, coupled with sales of other manufactures’ off the shelf filters, culminated in the proto type you see in the picture below. This is also the filter going to be used on the fiberglass tanks, seen above.

There are 3 prerequisites for this filter design
1. The dimensional design for this filter is to be fed with a standard 4” pipe, with an incoming water velocity of 2ft per sec or a flow rate of 4700 gal/hr. This is the minimum recommended for self cleaning of a pipe section.
2. The biological capacity for this filter is 1 ½ kilo of food per day with a peak ammonia levels of .025 mg/l
3. The filter must pass thru a 32inch opening

Over the past few years we have had pest on the farm that have caused major damage to our mud ponds. This has caused many mud ponds to be come unusable.

In order to fix the mud ponds wire mesh will need to be placed on the sides of the berms and new clay will be used to reform the ponds.

Most of this work will be done once harvest is completed, but due to wet weather over the fall and winter monthes, we have decided to use this dry weather for mining the clay need to reform the ponds and stock pile it until fall.

To do this  HUGE job in a very short time, we had to bring in the BIG Machines.

1 excuvator and 2 dump trucks are needed for the job.

Untouched ground in the back of the farm was the site to mine for clay

2 of our damaged Tosai ponds have been opened up and are being used to store the clay until we are ready to use it.

The guys will work thru the weekend to complete this job and back to koi farming on Monday!