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Re: Filtration
With no animals, filtration is really not useful for chemical maintenance.
Perhaps it will serve only for trapping particulate matter.
With a few animals + lots of plants, filtration again is not necessary.
You want to keep as much ammonium available if the plants are growing
like crazy. Filter only serves to make it harder for the plants by having
the filter bacteria convert it into nitrates, which require more energy by
the plants
to utilize.
With a moderate # of animals, filtration is useful because plants will have
hopefully
have enough ammonium and the filter acts as a buffer for any additional
chemical maintenance.
Bacteria will build on the filter media and convert ammonia to nitrates,
which is "good"
for the fish.
I don't think anything bad would happen if you ommited it, but you have a
jungle of plants in there.
However with any body of water, it can't sit still otherwise it gets
"nasty" if ANY organic matter
is in it. So filtration could double as a form of water circulation.
> Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:50:14 -0800
> From: Dave Gomberg <gomberg at wcf_com>
> Subject: Filtration
>
> Since there seem to be so many filtration advocates on this list I have
> some questions:
>
> In a tank with lots of plants and
> 1. no animals, is filtration useful?
> 2. very few animals, is filtration useful?
> 3. moderate animals, is filtration useful?
> 4. In case 3, what role does filtration play? What objectives does it
> accomplish? What bad would happen if you omitted it?
>
> Thanks for educating the clueless.
>
>
>
> - --
> Dave Gomberg, San Francisco mailto:gomberg at wcf_com
> http://www.wcf.com/co2iron