Roughening the beads might be good, but the beads that came with my bead
filters were not roughened and they work fine in both bead filters. The
poly beads are for a pressurized system, with the water flowing up through
the beads and into a slotted pipe for discharge back to the pond. The
kaldness is a floating filter media that is more like hollow tubes that are
tossed around in an open filter by high air flow. The discharge from a
kaldness filter is not from the top. The kaldness is the best material for
converting ammonia to nitrites, and nitrites to nitrates, but beads will
perform that function and act as a mechanical filter for fines. One of the
ponds I visited recently uses the kaldness for the biological filtration and
then sends it through a bead filter to polish the water by removing the fine
suspended material.
--
RichToyBox
http://www.geocities.com/richtoybox/pondintro.html


"Drew Cutter" wrote in message
...
we have a plastic factory that has an outlet type store. According to
the direction on the bead filter , you need beads that are not totally
smooth . The example was to put them into a cement mixer with sands. I
did find mail order out west that sell beads. I currently trying find
out whether kaldnes beads would be ideal for what i want to do.
Cleaning is a big question I'm still trying figure out. Power wash
, aeration .