Vortex Brushes

Black Knight Spawning Brushes

Pack of 2 specially designed soft spawning brushes each brush measures 1.5m by 140mm diameter.

Spawning is made easy with the help of these specially designed brushes. The breeding season is normally from April to July depending on the weather.

Place the Spawning Brushes just below water level, one above the other, at the edge of the pond, this will
encourages your fish to spawn, usually in the early hours.

Spawning takes several hours with the eggs sticking to the brushes.
After spawning, separate the brushes from the broodfish to avoid the eggs being eaten.
Place the brushes in filtered water of the same temperature and the fry will hatch in 3-6 days.

Small fish should be kept separate until they are large enough to be introduced to the pond.

Please Note: These spawning brushes are made from a soft material that won’t harm your fish. DO NOT USE filter brushes for this purpose

Alfagrog

Alfagrog is a porous foamed ceramic material, which is lightweight, strong and inert.
It’s high surface area makes it the natural choice for colonisation by micro-organisms in biological filtration systems resulting in cleaner water.

The Alfagrog range of porous ceramic filter media is made under controlled conditions UK.

Selected clays and raw materials are rapidly sintered at high temperature to produce a foamed ceramic porous mass, which is crushed and sieved to a convenient particle size.

Alfagrog is available in a wide range of sizes giving the end user optimum media surface area in varying water flow rates.

The manufacturing process ensures that no substances are present to adversely affect the health of fish or plants. The material is pH neutral and can be used in both freshwater and marine applications.

Why is it so effective:

The key to effective biological filtration is choosing media with the highest surface area possible to allow beneficial bacteria to colonise and remove waste from the water. Alfagrog has an extremely high surface area by volume compared with other types of filter media on the market.

Alfagrog is very inert and soon colonises with beneficial bacteria. Alfagrog is made of a highly porous material that contains many thousands of tiny pockets in which bacteria can thrive making in an ideal material for biological filters

Its only draw back is its sharp on the hands when cleaning so please wear gloves..

Benefits over other filter media:

• Extremely high surface area
• Highly porous
• Inert, pH neutral
• Lightweight
• Available worldwide
• Economical
• Available in 15kg sacks

Bacteria Home media

Bacteria home is a high-quality filter medium that is made from mineral rock. This porous rock is baked at a very high temperature. It is ideally suited for a bakki shower, but can also be used in other filters.

The microscopic pores immediately ensure a rapid growth of high concentrations of bacteria, which greatly improves the water quality. The bacteria filter harmful substances such as nitrate, nitrite and ammonia from the water.

The material is very porous and slightly rough on the surface, so that the water that is sprayed over it is, as it were, polished. Because colonies of anaerobic (low-oxygen) bacteria can nest in the pores of this filter media, which take care of the conversion of nitrate to nitrogen gas, you could prefer this type of filter media to non-porous filter media.

Two types of bacteria are involved in the aerobic (oxygen-rich) conversion. The Nitrosomonas bacterium converts ammonia into nitrite and the Nitrobacter bacterium then converts nitrite into nitrate. Although nitrate does not immediately pose a health risk to fish, high doses are not desirable. High nitrate levels promote strong algae growth; this mainly occurs in the spring because the bacteria have not yet multiplied sufficiently.

Anaerobic bacteria are used to convert nitrate into nitrogen gas. This process can only take place in the absence of oxygen, i.e. at places in the filter media where little or no oxygen is present and can reach. The first step in this process is the reversal of the nitrification process. Nitrate is converted back into nitrite. The second step of the denitrification is the conversion of nitrite into nitrogen gas. (N2). This gas can then be released without causing any further damage to the environment.

Bacteria Home also provides an increased mineral and redox value. It also brings considerably more oxygen into the water than, for example, aerated bottom drains. Bacteria Home improves your water quality up to 16 times more effectively than aerated underwater filtration.