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Re: Is no filter an option?



> > Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 13:10:25 -0600
> > From: Stephen Boulet
> >
> > I was wondering if it were an option to remove all of my filters on my
> > heavily planted, moderately stocked (with fish) 55 gallon?
>
> I use a small hang-on-the-back power filter on each of my aquariums,
> but without any filtering media.  The filter is there just to
> circulate the water, and as a convenient place to inject CO2.  HTH
>
> Regards,
> Bob
>

Well, I altered my current filter setup. I have a biowheel pro 60 on my tank,
which is a powerhead with a sponge prefilter that sends some water over a pair of
biowheels. I just disconnected the biowheels, leaving me with the power head,
prefilter,  and the tube that used to go to the biowheels being used to send water
to one side of the tank.

There is much less surface agitation this way, and the first thing I noticed was
that it takes much less CO2 to get the water to the desired pH. Way much less. I
think this newly refilled 10 pound cylinder will last much longer this time with
my 55 gallon aquarium.

Otherwise it will be very interesting to see how the removal of the biowheels from
the system will affect the plants, since the biowheels are very efficient ammonia
eliminators. Now the plants will have the opportunity to get their nitrogen from
ammonia rather than from nitrates.

That brings up an interesting question. I would imagine that, in a given set of
plants, some plants would do better than other plants  in the presence of ammonia
as the main N source and that there might be different winners among the plants if
the major source of N were nitrates. Comments?

-- Stephen