Does anyone know the comparitive filtering/water cleaning abilities of different aquarium plants?
There's a gentleman in town here (Denver) who has set up an interesting aquarium filter for his marine aquariums. He uses the case & pump from a wet-dry undertank, but instead of using bioballs he fills it with plants. It seems to work great, the tanks in the shop he had that setup on were much healthier than the ones with the traditional set-ups.
I'm thinking I would like to combine this idea with my current wet-dry. My plan is to leave the bio balls in, but fill the resevoir side with plants & leave grow light on them all from 1pm to 11am (not quite 24 hours & flipped from the plants in the tank). I'll have to build a screen filter for the pump, but that's pretty simple.
My problem is that the only plant I have an abundant amount of is java moss and I'm not sure what kind of filtering ability it has. I could get some cabamba for pretty cheap, but I've never had really good luck with it. Maybe a mixture of assorted plants would be good? My amazon swords from my old tropical tank are sending out babies like mad...they need to be seperated anyway...there's no room for the fish anymore!
Suggestions?
thanks,
kris