"Kedar" wrote in message
ups.com...
Can something else be grown in an aquarium just to absorb the nutrients
from the water ..like bamboo, wheat grass, anything which grows roots
fast enough to absorb some nutrients .. i may be thinking loud here but
the general idea is without planting anything in the aquarium is there
a easy way to remove nitrates apart from 20 % weekly water change.

Thanks
Kedar


This practise is known as 'aqua-ponics'
or something spelt like that
anyway, yes it's an ancient technology and there is prob more written about
it in actual food fish production than pets.
Wack it into google and theres thousands of sites, forums and documents out
there.
More commercial than hobby tho.
For hobbyists, duckweed and taro are 2 plants with the capacity to remove
nitrate en mass in my experience.
duckweed by rapid multiplication (smallest flowering plant with pop doubling
time of 24 hours!!!) and taro by storing the excess sugars away in it's
root.
taro needs a pond really and direct sunlight and duckweed can play havoc
with some filters and needs to be manually removed to actually 'remove' the
nitrates from the water...... this can be a problem when fish eat it
first!! Sometimes I have to resort to floating fry saver style holding pens
just to ensure I have a good sized parent population in the tank!
Anything growing tho takes out trace nutrients and stuff, this stuff is
usually replaced in small amounts during partial water changes, so you may
find you will need to add trace nutrients into your aquarium to keep plants
growing quicker than algae. Algae will outpace most plants in water that has
had most of the trace nutrients (really anything but nitrates and
phosphates) removed as a result of plant growth.
A few other things that I have tried have been monsterio delicio, mangroves,
potato, sweet potato, hydroponic lettuce......

For it to really be worth it you really need a good amount of water to play
with, if it's outside or in a greenhouse and ya have free sun then it all
starts to fit together!
Small scale it's amusing, and there really are a lot of houseplants that can
be trained to drop a thirsty root into the aqurium. Most philodendrums work
pretty good actually if ya start them in a bucket first to get roots. But
it's kinda pointless as a save on the bother of water changing as ya have to
top up heaps more with plants charging away, espec ponds.