Aquatic Plants Digest V1 #300

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Aquatic Plants Digest V1 #300
From: glen at harlie_pps.com (Glen Osterhout)
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 96 14:48:51 EST
>Subject: Plants and Ammonia
Cc: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
In-Reply-To: Aquatic-Plants-Owner at ActWin_com's message of Mon, 4 Mar 1996 03:39:02 -0500 <199603040839.DAA11275 at looney_actwin.com>

>
>A friend of mine and I are having a decussion as to wheither or not plants
>can make use of ammonia. I an about ready to setup a new tank and I wasn't
>going to have any bio filter at all. I was planning on using a Magnium 350
>for the mechanical filtration and water circulation. He is saying that this
>will not work.
>
>I plan on having the tank pretty heavly planted with about 30 neons and some
>house keeping fish. The tank will be a 45g high with aprox 2 watts per gal
>lighting.
>
>The main question here is will the plants take care of the ammonia/ammonium
>and can a tanks be sucessfully setup without biological filtartion?

The setup you describe should have no trouble handling the ammonia from
the fish load you are planning to have.  Anyway, all a biofilter provides 
is lots of surface area where bacteria can grow, and lot of plants (even 
plastic ones) would provide a similar amount of surface area.  So don't 
worry about it; if you notice nitrates creeping up, increase your plant 
load or do more water changes. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Subject: Java Fern rotting
>
>Hi.  Had an interesting problem develop in the last 2 weeks I'm curious 
>if anyone's also seen.  I have a huge growth of Java Fern (four 
>different varieties, including two grown from Karen's cuttings) on a 
>piece of bogwood in my 45 gallon semi-high tech tank.  In the last week, 
>I've noticed a lot of the leaves have rapidly rotted away, first 
>developing brown spots which eventually spread to the whole frond.  Here 
>is what has changed in my tank recently:
<SNIP>

I think you're on the right track with the nutrient deficiency theory. My
Java ferns seem especially sensitive to iron deficiency, and they show
the same symptoms you describe when I get lazy with the trace elements.

Glen