pull the chain." You must be familiar with time and motion studies. But Charles is a chemist, not an engineer or a physicist, so I guess we can't tease about Ph D = pile it higher and deeper. ;)
I don't think in most cases we will be able to pull most of the organic wastes from the water with plants. Maybe a pair of guppies in a planted tank with regular water changes or one of those Aquatic Gardens with a low fish load will work, but it is hard because we "have eyes bigger than our stomachs when at auctions or the LFS. Or the guppies keep on having guppies. ;)
On the other hand, there are some neat, fairly inexpensive things which can be done. Several rain forest and or marsh plants can grow with "wet feet". Their roots are in the water, the rest of them is extending out of the aquarium (of course increasing the risks of jumping fish and evaporation).
The beauty of some of those plants (Spaths, Philodendrum and even water sprite, water lettuce, and the much hated duck weed) is that oxygen and CO2 exchanges are much greater out of the water than in it. A FAMA article on the topic of emergent plants (among other things) by Diana Walstad, suggested that this gas exchange might be something like 100 times greater than in the water.
Ms. Walstad, by the way, has written a book -Ecology of the Planted Aquarium, C. 1999 - which suggests how one can put together a pretty good planted system without spending one's college fund on it. She even shows how soil can be used under the gravel as a carbon source so one doesn't have to spend a fortune on a CO2 unit or build one of the risky DIY units.
As is so often the case, I'm soon to be in over my head on the topic. See if you can borrow her book through interlibrary loan.
I think you will be intrigued by some of her ideas. As a killinut, I'm a little edgy because most of her research and research sources are with temperate, hardwater plants, because tropical killies may not come from those waters. Guppies do come from waters with more of a "Midwest American" mineral river blend somewhat along the line of a percentage of components typically 31.9% bicarbonate, 12.4% sulfate, 8.6% chloride, 16.6% calcium, 14.5% silica, 7% sodium, 4.5% magnesium and 2.5% potassium. (Thanks to a recent killitalk essay by chemist David Koran.)
What she says may indeed have significance for guppy people keeping their charges in a planted tank. If one is raising a lot of fish and is under a deadline set by a show schedule, I don't think that kind of tank would be useful.
It's been a few years since I read "the plant book without a lot of plant photos". If someone is more recently familiar with her ideas, would you please help us out?
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