I guess I should have detailed this more, so allow me to expand.
Aquatic plants significantly prefer ammonium as their source of nitrogen and rarely take up nitrate unless the ammonium is not sufficient. When nitrate is taken up, studies have shown that the plants must change it back into ammonium, and this takes additional energy, which is why they prefer ammonia/ammonium. In acidic water, the ammonia produced by fish and bacteria is basically changed into ammonium and the plants take it up directly. In basic water the plants still take up the ammonia but convert it into ammonium. They also have the ability to take up ammonia as a toxin; when I once questioned my colleagues on one of the plant groups if there was a limit to this, Tom Barr mentioned that the plants' ability to take up ammonia was considerable and unless the tank was way out of balance this would never be reached.
In my 15+ years of planted tanks I have set up dozens of new tanks, and reset existing tanks using new substrate and filter media, and always put fish in the tank on day one (having it well planted). I never see ammonia or nitrite above zero, ever. The Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira bacteria do establish, but their numbers are much fewer if there are sufficient plants. The minimal amount of ammonia that somehow manages to get past the plants is so low it cannot be detected with our basic test kits; and of course, nitrite is the same. Another benefit of plants is that nitrite is not a result of their take up of ammonia.
Diana Walstad notes that the plants are in competition with bacteria for the ammonia, and the plants are generally much faster. This is why we do not want to encourage excess biological filtration. Provided there is sufficient light intensity to drive photosynthesis, and assuming the other 16 nutrients are available, plants will win out. I fully agree that the fish load must be in balance with the plant load. But this is fairly easy to achieve, if one uses fast-growing plants such as stem plants and especially floating plants which are fast assimilators of nutrients including ammonia/ammonium, and the initial fish stocking is low.
Byron.
--- In AquaticLife@yahoogroups.com, sevenspringss@... wrote:
>
> Byron,
>
> While aquatic plants will consume a fair portion of the nitrate being
> produced, there are also many which prefer consuming ammonia and nitrite over
> nitrate. Still, depending on the bioload and the flora to fauna balance, they
> can rarely be depended upon to maintain a low enough ammonia level not toxic
> to fish when this waste product peaks around the ten day period; likewise
> for the expected nitrite spike within the 20 day period. Live plants will
> certainly help towards this end, in cycling a tank, but unless the tank is
> loaded up enough with plants in comparison to the amount of fish mass present,
> the organic wastes can rise beyond the fish's tolerance -- especially during
> the nights (of the 10th to 12th days), the time when plants don't uptake
> foods because of not being able to synthesise them in the dark. There can be
> a fine line in this balance of fish and plants, which cannot be trusted to
> fall back on until the nitrifying bacteria populate in sufficient amounts to
> control the spiking of the organic wastes.
>
> Ray</HTML>
>
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