Plants as a filter?

[dougall]

Check out the research and publishings performed by Diana Walstat if you want to get a better bunch of information.

in short (in my opinion) yes, it's possible. but you need to keep stocking levels down, and you need to ensure that there is plenty of growth by the plants. if you don't have natural light, it will be difficult, and more expensive to light the plants than it would cost to run a small air powered filter.

 

[red devil]

Maybe of interest to you, Shedd's Aquarium in Chicago had an aquarium biotope (is that the right word?) set up with a river, land trees, fish, I think even frogs or turtles...the fascinating thing is that it was (almost) completely self sustaining...but still at times needed some intervention. Fish ate the food that the environment provided, plants cleaned the water, etc. It was quite large, as I recall, as in 20' long?