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Aquatic Plants Digest V1 #300
>
>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.
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>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