am I really growing beneficial nitrates???

[Magnum Man26 141]

found this picture in a sponge filter ad… thoughts???

 

[Rusty_Shackleford25 141]

You're not really  growing nitrates. But I guess they are somewhat beneficial to plants.
It's kind of like saying new and improved U236, now with more radiation than U235!

 

[GaryE25 140]

"Come to Gary's restaurant for our new and improved food poisoning!"

 

[jaylach25 142]

The thing is that, yes, nitrates are good for several species of plants, but not so much for fish. I suggest to try to keep the nitrates down to 5-10 PPM if possible.

 

[TwoTankAmin20]

Virtually all aquatic plants will consume nitrate when sufficient levels of ammonium are not available, Since we actually work to keep ammonia levels as close to 0 on our test kits as possible, the plants in our tanks will be using nitrate.

If one reads the labels on the ferts we add to ur tanks for plants one will almost always find they contain some form of nitrates. In the high tech co2 added planted tanks, of wwich I had one for a decade, I used a fert. which contained potassium nitrate.

No matter how many plants we might have in a tank there will always be some amount of nitrifying bacteria in the tank. This is because fish and organic waste both produce ammonia. In tanks most to all of this will almost insantly be converted to ammonium. However, as long as there is ammonia being created, some of it will last long enough for bacteria to use it.

How much of the being created in a tank ammonia will be turned into ammonium depends upon the pH and temperature of the water. When this means all of the ammonia will become ammonium, the bacteria are still able to use that only not as efficiently as they can use ammonia. This applies to the plants and nitrate. They can use it but what they must do in order to use it takes energy. This means less of the energy they can get from using nitrate i because they must expend energy to be able to use it. Ammonium, one tfe other hand, can be used more efficiently.

When both ammonium and nitrate are present, aquartic plants will almost all choose to use the ammonium over the nitrate. But, when there is no choice because there is basically only nitrate, the plants will use it. Interestingly, Plants will use the ammonium evern when there is no light availabe but they must have light to use the nitrate. this is from. You can read about this from Diana Walstad (from2014) https://koiorganisationinternational.org/sites/default/files/Plants verses Filters.pdf


For those who have some level of trust in the Google AI (note almost no plants use ammonia but rather they use ammonium):

AI Overview

Nearly 100% of aquatic plants can use nitrate as a source of nitrogen for growth, but roughly 88% (about 29 out of 33 studied species) heavily prefer to consume ammonia or ammonium first when it is available.

How Aquatic Plants Use Nitrogen

• • Ammonium Preference: Research reviewed by planted tank expert Diana Walstad shows that most submerged aquatic plants prefer ammonium because converting nitrate into usable plant protein requires an extra energy cost.
  • Switching to Nitrate: If ammonia or ammonium is absent or depleted, plants seamlessly switch to absorbing and converting nitrate from the water column. [1]
  • Emergent and Floating Plants: Plants with leaves or roots exposed to the air (like floating plants or house plants grown with roots in the water, such as pothos) actively and rapidly pull large amounts of nitrate directly from the water.