Re: Plants and biofilters and CO2

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Tom, your post is one of the best I've read on nitrogen, filters, and
planted tanks.

To sum up a couple of threads -- knowing full well the risks of
generalizing;

Injecting CO2 to levels used in planted aquaria won't kill off the
bioculture, not even when injected in a canister filter

Generally Plants use NH4 *and* NO3, with various preferences for the
ratio, but they do not use NO2 -- either the plants get the
ammonia/ammonium or its builds up or gets converted (by the biofilter)
to nitrites and then to nitrates.

Biofilters provide a backup to keep nitrites down.

You can run planted tanks without biofilters, but fish loads must be
severely minimized ("severely" if your the kind of aquarist that likes
to keep fish) or the ammonia/ammonium the fish produce can foster algae
growth.

Biofiltration can be (generally is) good for planted tanks, especially
if their is a more than a negligible fish load.

I'm feeling better and better about the money I spent on the German
apparatus, not to mention the French and American ones.  ;-)

Scott H.

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