Plants And Fish Waste

[shankygrl]

i'm new to live plants and i just recently bought some java moss online because i heard that's the easiest to grow without co2. i was just wondering if it will 'eat' up the fish waste in the tank or does that only happen with plants with roots?

thanks

 

[George Farmer]

Java moss will have minimal affect on solid fish waste, in fact it can trap detritus etc. that may adversely affect its growth in tanks with less than ideal circulation or heavy fish loads.

Bacteria in the substrate will break fish waste down to an extent. If there is plants in the substrate, they can help use up the waste as nutrients. The substrate still need to be maintained in a heavily planted tank though, as stale substrate lead to poor plant growth and algae.

Welcome to TFF!

 

[plantbrain]

i'm new to live plants and i just recently bought some java moss online because i heard that's the easiest to grow without co2. i was just wondering if it will 'eat' up the fish waste in the tank or does that only happen with plants with roots?

thanks

Plants use both the roots and leaves to remove waste, generally thought as NH4.
Adding CO2 increases growth rates by 10x vs the non CO2 method. This can be assumed to upregulate NH4 uptake by 10X after a period of time. So adding CO2 can help remove all of the fish to the point where we have to add 50-100% inorganic NO3 etc fertilizers to maintain growth.
In a slower growing non CO2 tank, the rate of uptake is slow, but so is the upkeep and labor.

Java fern is good, but adding floating water sprite will remove more nutrients and NH4 waste better. If you plan on aesthetics, you can also add both.

Floating water sprite has access to the air CO2 source and is also closer to the light, so it will have a much faster growth rate than Java fern and water sprite will block light that the algae might use etc. I use to keep about 2/3 of the surface with a thicket of water sprite in all my tanks as a kid. It's a weed which is good in a non CO2 tank.


Regards,
Tom Barr