Rolling through Aquaria central today, I came across this:

www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=235152


This guy has used HOB filters with two common household plants to filter nitrates out of his 210 gallon tank. I may finally have my answer for my wanting to use plants to get purify nitrates.

Apparently, this plant eats nitrates at a very fast rate. and in 30 days the plants he started with grew 5-6 feet each, and they just eat and eat and eat.

This is a plant which I already own. My great-grandma gave me a cut of her plant when I was young. The plant must be close to 100 years old now.

Maybe I can finally get it to grow faster

Thought I would pass this along.

Cheers,

Wow... Thanks Hun! I have a TON of those plants and a SH*T load of unused HOB's... This would also stop the Oscars from ripping out the plants! ... I am going to give it a shot!

I am going to put the ivy I have in the new sump in the new tank. Ivy's don't like a lot of light anyway, and when it does grow 5-6 feet, The leaves can give it what little light they do actually want.

I have an unused HOB I will use as a last resort.

After doing more research, I saw you can also raise orchids through hydro-culture, and I may stick some orchids in an HOB to add some wonderful color to the top of the tank.

very interested article and idea. thanks for sharing.

jcannonb wrote:



OMG Orchids would be BEAUTIFUL!!! I think I wanna go that route...

So I could essentially just plop in some house plants like these 'pothos' into my HOB as long as I have some sort of plastic frame for the roots to anchor onto?

This is very interesting

Yeppers Johnny...

Apparently that is the case. They eat the nitrates right up!

Are we talking Oscar Nitrates or Neon Tetra Nitrates? has he given any results other than "it just pulls the Nitrates from the water" It would be interesting to know how much of an effect it has on the water, sounds like a good idea in theory.

this has been proven effective and useful...but for some reason. hobbyist
find it tiring and messy... i had been using plants before and planning
to use itin bigger scale when my aquaponics project push through.

jcannonb wrote:


Well, I would have to use the low light plants...the fishtank isn't in a high light area and I wouldn't want to have to rig up another light above the tank.

aus-car wrote:



Nitrates are nitrates aus-car. You may referring to the volume of nitrates. The article sited this was working for him on his 210 gallon tank. I may be making an assumption here, but 210 gallons doesn't sound like a neon tetra tank to me

;-P

No one likes a smartass, you know what I mean.

And you should never assume Does it state what fish he is keeping?