Aquaponics vs. Planted vs. Scrubber

The difference is the three different methods achieve the same goal but to varrying degrees based largely on their effective size.
For me the scrubber wins hands down due to the size of the scubber required to reduce biologically accumated wastes.
A film of single celled aquatic plants grows faster and with greater ease, consuming more nutrients in a smaller space than the other two methods.

I'm inclined to agree that size is really where the key advantage lies for the scrubber. Incidentally, I've had success growing certain plants in aquaponics setups under continuous flow rather than ebb and flow.

I'd really like to see more examples of algae scrubbers in FW setups. I doubt anyone has thus far done a real comparison of the rate of nitrate/phosphate reduction with a scrubber vs. aquaponic veggie filter.

I thought Noto made some great and relevant points in the other thread so I thought I'd include them here.

Noto;3647417; said:

Re: micronutrients

with plants in the aquarium, you are starting with a particular plant and trying to tailor the nutrients available in the system to its needs; with the algal scrubber, you are starting with the system and whichever algae happen to be present and letting the algae which are best suited to the system prosper. Not necessarily a general difference between algae and embryophytes, just a difference in approach.

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Noto;3650662; said:

With regards to freshwater systems, eutrophic systems (which is basically what a heavily-stocked aquarium is) tend to have high levels of both plants and algae. The more consistent the nutrient level is, the larger the plant portion. Boom-and-bust type systems often have more algae. Algae are also better-suited to high-flow and pelagic systems, and so tend to outnumber plants in those environments.

Algae biomass tracks closely to nutrient levels, so algae is better able to respond to sudden abnormal nutrient influxes (such as, say, a fish die-off, or Junior dumping a bunch of fish food in the tank) while plants are more persistent and so are ready to uptake nutrients after a long period of low nutrient levels, when algae populations may have crashed. So, there are possible benefits to using both plants and algae in a filtration system.

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Ripariums are another way to keep lots of plants as biofilter. Riparium setups with emergent are generally easier to manage than regular planted tanks.

they all three do the same thing, and you could definitely do it with aquatic plants, all three would require pruning and occasional removal of plants.
algae probably grows fastest, but i bet theres aquatic and aquaponic plants that have rates almost as fast.

the main reason a planted tank would be at a disadvantage is light penetration of the water and higher foliage.

A disadvantage of the algae scrubber as described by SantaMonica is that unless you clean it, the underneath algae dies, and rots, and pollutes your water. With emergent plants, the plants just grow bigger, till you prune them.

Something you might consider, pete, given that you live in the icky sticky hot south is a bog like Tuggerd put on his giant backyard pond. You could pipe the water out to a bog that feeds on natural sunlight outside, with emergent plants that look great and suck nitrates out of your water. The problems I guess are the potential exposure of your water to outside contamination, and heat loss in the bog. You would presumably run very slow flow through the bog though so the rate of heat exiting your tank might not be that bad. Just a thought.

Besides general growth rate, another point to consider when selecting potential plant filtration species is relative protein content. Since the amount of protein that a plant incorporates is directly related to the amount of nitrogen it takes out of the water, more proteinaceous plants seem like they would be better at filtering out nitrates.

Duckweed seems that it would be a prime filtration candidate since it grows very quickly and apparently has one of the highest plant protein contents (up to 45% according to one source). That's why it's increasingly used as an element of biofiltration in swine farming. Unfortunately it's about as ugly and messy to deal with as algae.

Anyone know the relative protein content of FW algae?

hydrophyte;3654137; said:

Ripariums are another way to keep lots of plants as biofilter. Riparium setups with emergent are generally easier to manage than regular planted tanks.

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Hydrophyte - your stunning ripariums are so much more than a biofilter! The main difference here is that the plants take up so much room in ripariums and generally need to be planned from the start as a specific kind of display rather than just a modification to the filtration system. Setup and maintence are probably more involved. Also, not all of us have the aesthetic sense to set up a nice looking one (hence hiding our plants in the sump).

I have noticed that aquatic plants such as Salvinia sp. could be excellent in a bog filter or even floating in the tank or pond as the grow at such an amazing rate.
I am sure the nutrient uptake would be higher for faster growing species.