Tiny discovery that is definately worth sharing.

[Nic]

 

[severum1]

Plants + KISS are the way to go

Good job

 

[spring007]

What about adding some mangroves? would that help a lot?

 

[FireMedic]

I did not go the Mangrove route for two reasons:
1) I live in Northern Wisconsin and do not have the needed photo period to adequately grow Mangrove.
2) I did not want to increase my energy bill with high powered lights for Mangrove.

I chose a humble, hardy and easily propagated houseplant. I encourage everyone to try it with other plants and post the results.

 

[spotfin]

Photos of Bio-filter and plants.

Are those the only plants you have for the whole system?

 

[Docsoldlady]

AMAZING!! I am going to show this to my husband, so simple yet so brilliant!

 

[FireMedic]

Yes, just the four plants shown in the pics. I started out with 6-7, can not remember, the remaining four are as stiff as celery and grow vigorously. I trim the plants often (3wks). I decided that I am just gunna let 'em grow and see how big they get.

I added a single plant to my 80 gallon acrylic tank. It is a reef tank that I use to keep Electric and BumbleBee Cats.
Here is the plant, it's location, it's root (31 inches) and a little local denizen.

 

[avishay]

Thank you for sharing, it is very tempting to try as well.

 

[Marius]

As an addition:
The water in from my well is very hard. Hard enough that every 2-3 months I must disassemble my dishwasher (not my Wife) and hand clean the scale from it's innards.

I have three rays in 300 +/- gallons so bio load isn't actually too bad...water is filtered through 33 vertical gallons of biofilter before it reaches the plants.

More info to come.
Respectully,
FireMedic.

What's the pH of the tap water? If it's over 7.5 you can add a bag of aragonite to one of the filters, or just put a simple sand filter (great bio) on the tank (playsand and aragonite). That would ensure a stable pH and alkalinity.

Great info guys. Thanks for posting this FM.

 

[abortedsoul]

I love your setup. I'll have to drop you questions when I am building my pond! Got any full-tank shots to share?