• Journal of Aquaculture
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.181-183
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• 2008

It has been a very hard problem to reduce solids especially suspended solids (SS) in recirculating aquaculture systems. Present description is based on the performance of trapping SS by the biofilter of Intensive Bio-production Korean (IBK) system which is originally developed for nitrification. We found out that this filter has an excellent capability to remove SS in addition to nitrification. Filter element used here is corrugated plastic roofing plates readily available in the market, and cheaper than specially developed and patented products. It is easy to maintain the system, and requires low power consumption to operate for the treatment of a large amount of water. With 2 pumps of 5 hp each, about 500 $m^3$ of water is treated per hour. Flow speed in the filter was 2.6 mm/sec on average. This low flow speed and very large amount of water treated are the reasons for very effective trapping of fine SS. Upon single pass through this filter, 74.5% of total SS and 40% of non-settleable SS were removed. Wherever this filter is employed in recirculating fish farms water keeps high clarity, this having also been empirically ascertained.

• Journal of fish pathology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.91-97
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• 2005

Bio-secure culture of olive flounder Paralichthys olivaceus in the IBK (Intensive Bioproduction Korean) recirculating system with dry pellet was tested for 6 months. The IBK system consists of 12 rearing tanks, 6 sedimentation tanks. 4-sectioned submerged biofilter chamber and channels. The size of each rearing tank was 3m in diameter and 1m in depth. The size of each biofilter chamber was $3.1\times3.3\times2.0$ m (D) and was filled with corrugated plastic plates as a biofilter medium. Total surface area of the biofilter was 3,789.7 $m^2$ Water was circulated by one of two vertical axial pump and circulating rate was about 34 times per day. A UV light sterilizer was used to treat inlet sea water with the flow rate of 4 ton/hr. All fish were treated with 150 ppm formalin 3 times with 5 day interval before stocking. It took 60 days for 'conditioning' the biofilter with the stocking density of 4.5 kg of fish $m^2$. The concentrations of ammonium-nitrogen, nitrite-nitrogen and nitrate-nitrogen in the system remained at the range of 0.096-0.315 mg/L, 0.015-0.504 mg/L, and 2.530-39.517 mg/L, respectively. Water temperature fluctuated from 17.5 to 25.1$^{\circ}C$ and salinity was from 30.1 to 33.5 ppt during rearing period. The fish grew from the average weight of 615.2 g to 1,201.1 g for 180 days. Initial and final fish densities were 8.4 and 15.9$kg/m^2$, Survival rate was 97.1 %. Neither parasites nor noticeable diseases was observed during the raring period even Vibrio spp. were detected from some fish in the system.