# Highest ammonia uptake by which plant?



## arnieroy (May 10, 2007)

I came across this article on the net and was interested in knowing which aquatic plant soaks up the highest amount of ammonia and which plant is the fastest?

http://www.aquabotanic.com/plants_and_biological_filtration.htm

My guess would be water hyacinth or water lettuce!


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## ianmoede (Jan 17, 2005)

The water change plant?  I'd say some variety of hygro.


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## arnieroy (May 10, 2007)

Well, there were no answers for this post, I guess I did not phrase the question properly, hence I will try to rephrase it.. I read in Ms. Walstad's articles that most of the aquatic plants take up ammonia through the leaves but there was no comparative analysis given on which plant can be used as an optimal plant for sucking up ammonia.. 

Will it be something like Spirodila Polyrhiza? or maybe something like Ceratophyllum demersum or Lemna Polyrrhiza or Eloeda nuttallii?


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

whichever is the fastest growing one i'd imagine.


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## dymndgyrl (Jan 22, 2007)

Basically what Diana is saying is that all aquatic plants will take up ammonium first, if they can, with a few exceptions that prefer nitrates. A plant will "soak up" only as much as it needs, I would imagine - the ones that grow the fastest and biggest would be your answer.


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## ruki (Jul 4, 2006)

From my experience with non-filtered tanks, floating plants that develop larger leaves and roots do the best job.

They have free access to CO2 from the atmosphere, so they can process alot more nitrogen as food than any submerged plant. Small duckweed doesn't seem to scale up like the giant duckweed, salvinia or especially water lettuce.

My vote is for water lettuce (Pistia stratiodes).

Hydro that has pushed thought the water surface should also do a really good job, but it typically doesn't grow that way, at least right away.


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