# Setting up a 120G NPT.



## dogsout (Feb 2, 2013)

I've read the book and I had an NPT running for a while before. It was home to some Channa pulchra so it was very heavily planted and filterless - there were no problems apart from the fish being pretty boring!

So I'm thinking about doing it again but I have a few questions. The tank is 4' x 2' x 2'. I intend to stock a modest-sized group of Rainbow fish. I'm unsure about how much flow would be best, and whether or not to use a filter. And if I do use a filter, how much bio-media to use. I'm also a little unsure of how much light I should be aiming for.

This is the equipment I have sitting around at the moment:

2 x Aqua el Reef Circulator 2600 (2600lph powerhead).
2 x Tetratec EX1200.
2 x Hagen Glo Twin 54w T5 Unit.

I'm unsure of whether or not to filter at all. I know the book says you don't need to as long as you've planted very heavily (obviously), and you can use a powerhead for a bit of flow. I'm also unsure of how much light I'll need. I expect one of the T5 units I have should suffice for low to medium light?

I notice a lot of people on here tend to advise running a filter as insurance. I'm not sure about this. The findings in the book regarding the preference for the uptake of ammonia/ammonium over nitrate made for pretty convincing reading. I don't really want the growth of the plants to suffer as a result of the use of a filter. I'm not looking to have to dose the tank or inject CO2 or any of that stuff, but it seems a lot of people handing out advice about the El Natural method on here recommend doing all that jazz. It seems there may have been some developments to the old NPT techniques since the book was published. I'm a little confused here!

Any help/guidance will be gratefully received.


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## dogsout (Feb 2, 2013)

I should probably point out that by 'the book' I'm referring to Ecology of the Planted Aquarium, and I am aware that Diana didn't invent NPTs, before somebody tells me off!


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## BruceF (Aug 5, 2011)

I run lots of small tanks with just a power head and a sponge on the intake. I don't see why you couldn't run your tank in a similar way. Just depends on bioload and such.


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## qwe123 (Jun 15, 2011)

I, too, have found it funny that Walstad gives such compelling evidence against filters for nitrification and yet it's so prevalent on this forum (dedicated to her approach). But there are plenty of examples across the web of people that have large tanks without filters.

I also feel that most of the appeal to her approach is the fact that there is no dosing or CO2 injection involved. Low maintenance to her seems to be no more than feeding fish, trimming plants, and once in a while water changes. That's what I go for and it makes the hobby much more enjoyable.

As for how much light and water movement, I'm still trying to get a handle on that as well...


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

I run large filters full of biomedia on most of my tanks. I do not use CO2 or fertilizers, but I do stock heavily and feed generously. The plants grow very well, and the filters allow me to keep the extra fish.

I have fewer problems with these tanks than I do with tanks with little or no filtration and few fish. That could be because of the biofiltration, or the extra circulation, or both. It is certainly possible to have unfiltered, lightly stocked tanks. It is partly a matter of personal preference, but the main reason I often recommend that people filter their tanks is because members asking for advice on this subject are usually beginners. And I definitely believe that big filters make success more likely for inexperienced aquarists.


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## SBS (Feb 26, 2013)

> I don't really want the growth of the plants to suffer as a result of the use of a filter.


Trust me, your plants won't suffer one bit from the addition of bio/mechanical filtration but will benefit from it. We should open a thread here to compare non or very low filtered NPT tanks to heavily filtered NPT tanks so that myth about flow and filtration being no good in NPT tanks stops once and for all. Certainly you can keep unfiltered tanks as long as it's planted and has low bioload. If money for filters is an issue, then that's the way to go.

Diana recently enough posted that despite what she wrote in the book flow/filtration is good in an NPT tank, especially large tanks. I am certain in relation to that update she mentioned the importance of oxygen levels in any tank and her previous recommendation about not having surface movement can be detrimental to tanks that build up high organics as fish and plants will suffocate/suffer. 
You also have to think how old the book is and how many years it actually took for it to be published. At those times there were hardly any people using external/canister filters and it was considered that flow is detrimental to plants but recent experience proves that on the contrary flow is essential in keeping healthy plants and a healthy tank.

You can run planted tanks without filtration of course and it will run fine as far as ammonia/nitrite is concerned(but how well will it look and how healthy are your plants or tank overall?) and I am with Michael on this. Filters and flow seem to be very beneficial to a planted tank. You have to think it's the establishment of microbial life that makes a planted tank run well and using biofiltration just adds up to the amount of nice bacteria that establishes in there. It's not just ammonia/nitrite bacs we want to establish but a huge diversity of bacteria. Flow is important for CO2 and nutritient distribution amongst the plants. It also prevents for example fine dust coating the leaves(which the plants produce themselves) and suffocating the plants, especially in a tank with little water changes. This causes algae outbreaks. The tank will run more stable and certainly look cleaner if you invest in filtration and you'll have extra redundancy in case something goes wrong with the plants.

What puts many folks off NPT tanks is the early tank versions that always looked dirty and covered in algae. Hence why tanks with injected CO2 got so popular despite the price tag, effort and time to achieve that look.
If you update the old NPT tank method with modern approach by mineralizing the soil first and using heavy filtration you can overcome a lot of issues that can occur.
My NPT tank for example has crystal clear water and no surface scam at all, no algae either. It looks like I am using Seachem Purigen or similar chemical methods(although I am not) and a lot of people commented how clear the water is. And it's a modified NPT tank with mineralized topsoil, clay in the substrate, 10x filtration, heavily planted and almost fully stocked, certainly overfed too.


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## dogsout (Feb 2, 2013)

Outstanding posts, gents. Thank you. I guess I'll be using one or both of these filters, then!

Am I right in thinking I should be using 108w of T5HO on a tank this size? Would it be useful to use the other one for a few hours a day to provide a bit of a boost as my tank gets no sun light? Or would that be unnecessary?


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## qwe123 (Jun 15, 2011)

SBS said:


> We should open a thread here to compare non or very low filtered NPT tanks to heavily filtered NPT tanks so that myth about flow and filtration being no good in NPT tanks stops once and for all.


Sounds like a great idea


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## Righteous (Sep 19, 2013)

qwe123 said:


> SBS said:
> 
> 
> > We should open a thread here to compare non or very low filtered NPT tanks to heavily filtered NPT tanks so that myth about flow and filtration being no good in NPT tanks stops once and for all.
> ...


I second that. 

I've been wondering the same thing as some of you may have seen in my earlier thread in which I experimented with removing my bio filtration suddenly:

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/el-natural/89000-reducing-bio-filtration.html

I would like to say I don't think that there is a myth, per se, that filtration is completely bad in an NPT. (At least I don't believe that). But I do believe that Diana explained in her book why "too much" bio filtration, specifically, can be detrimental. So the question I think is not all or none, but at what point, and in what forms does bio filtration become a problem.

For example, I have found increasingly high levels of nitrates at nearly 100ppm in my tank, which from my understanding is due largely to high levels of bio filtration. To quote from EofPA:



> Plants use the N of ammonium (not nitrate) to synthesize their proteins. So if nitrifying bacteria convert all ammonium to nitrates, plants are forced- at a great energy cost- to convert nitrates back to ammonium. For Zostera marina, using nitrates could conceivably take up to 50% of the plant's photosynthetic energy. The energy loss can be detrimental to sensitive plants.
> 
> Walstad, Diana Louise (2013-05-15). Ecology of the Planted Aquarium: A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise (Kindle Locations 3507-3511). Echinodorus Pub. Kindle Edition.


So the research seems to indicate that at some point bio filtration is indeed a problem in a planted tank. I for one would like to know if there's any experimental evidence that might help determine what level of bio filtration impairs plant growth. I could then try to make an educated guess at what type of filtration systems to invest in for the log term health of my current and future tanks.

I was thinking of running some bottle experiments and posting results if anyone thinks that would be useful / interesting.

Mike


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## frenchie1001 (Jun 25, 2013)

i just set up 120gal its not full NPT but i have a 2x54w fixture with geismann globes and it seems okay. i havent had a hint of algea and HC, lilopesis (spelling) and hairgrass is all growing. 

i am running ehiam 2217 and a fluval 205 on it atm. the 205 is on there more for flow than filtration.


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## Kerry (Sep 5, 2013)

Righteous said:


> I second that.
> 
> I've been wondering the same thing as some of you may have seen in my earlier thread in which I experimented with removing my bio filtration suddenly:
> 
> ...


What about using a de-nitrifying media such as Seachem's DeNitrate or Matrix in a filter? Having a media that combines both aerobic and anerobic bacterias to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas seems like an option here to add bio filtration without producing excessive nitrates. I understand the desire here to stay as low tech as possible, but, if you are going to use biofiltration and excess nitrate is an issue, then would this be a viable option? (I've been away from FW for decades and am trying to catch-up, so, forgive me if this not a good option...would like to know why not?)


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## SBS (Feb 26, 2013)

> Plants use the N of ammonium (not nitrate) to synthesize their proteins. *So if nitrifying bacteria convert all ammonium to nitrates*, plants are forced- at a great energy cost- to convert nitrates back to ammonium. For Zostera marina, using nitrates could conceivably take up to 50% of the plant's photosynthetic energy. The energy loss can be detrimental to sensitive plants.
> 
> Walstad, Diana Louise (2013-05-15). Ecology of the Planted Aquarium: A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise (Kindle Locations 3507-3511). Echinodorus Pub. Kindle Edition.


I would like to point out the "if" part in the highlighted sentence. Is bacteria more competitive than plants? From what I've read nitrifying bacteria is at the bottom of the food chain and is even subjected to predation by higher types of bacteria. So can they compete for ammonia better than plants? Nitrifying bacteria is largely existent in a substrate, plant roots provide a whole network of nitrifying media, etc...You can't eliminate nitrification completely by not having bio media in some filters. The point is who's more competitive. Bacteria needs oxygen to convert ammonia. Oxygen is the biggest limitation in tanks because everyone competes for oxygen. 
Plants need light and CO2. Light is normally not a problem. CO2 is. However, whithout enough CO2 to keep the plants healthy not only the plants won't compete for ammonia with nitrifying bacteria, but they will be struggling in general even if there's no competition with nitrifying bacteria. Plant health will deteriorate and that's when filtration comes handy as a redundancy to keep your fishes healthy.
This is when having good biofiltration will save the tank although it's not the desired scenario.

My anectodal evidence based on my well filtered NPT tank is that I barely have a reading of nitrAtes, it's below 5ppm when I measured. One of my 3 externals is a sand bed filter which has huge bio capacity. That's on top of two other big externals.
So in my experience high biological filtration at least does not affect the levels of nitrAtes in a planted tank and my plants are very healthy, don't seem affected by it in any way.
High nitrAtes in a NPT or any tank can be caused by many things, too high bioload for the plants to process(overfeeding, etc..), unhealthy plants, melting plants that are generally obstructed by doing their job because of additional factors like lack of CO2, lack of other nutritients, lack of even flow to distribute these amongst the plants equally,lack of light even(overshadowing).



> What about using a de-nitrifying media such as Seachem's DeNitrate or Matrix in a filter? Having a media that combines both aerobic and anerobic bacterias to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas seems like an option here to add bio filtration without producing excessive nitrates.


Denitrifying media has no purpose in a planted tank I think. The point is ammonia to be taken by plants rather than the filter bacteria in order to prevent accumulation of nitrates which apparently are harder for plants to process compared to ammonia and even nitrites. Plus denitrification is very hard to achieve in a save manner because the same anaerobic bacteria that converts nitrates to gas has a lot more damaging functions(convert nitrAte back to nitrIte) if subjected to oxygen by accident. And again, is bacteria more competitive than plants really?


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## Kerry (Sep 5, 2013)

> Denitrifying media has no purpose in a planted tank I think. The point is ammonia to be taken by plants rather than the filter bacteria in order to prevent accumulation of nitrates which apparently are harder for plants to process compared to ammonia and even nitrites. Plus denitrification is very hard to achieve in a save manner because the same anaerobic bacteria that converts nitrates to gas has a lot more damaging functions(convert nitrAte back to nitrIte) if subjected to oxygen by accident. And again, is bacteria more competitive than plants really?


Gotcha! Coming over from marine tanks and the mindset regarding bio-filtration IS different! I have a lot to learn on planted aquaria. Thank you for clarifying that for me, SBS.


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## SBS (Feb 26, 2013)

A few of you were interested in us having a comparison thread for NPTs with filtration and without so I opened a new thread with my tank example to start it off. Please contribute with your own examples, bad or good.

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...iltration-npts-detrimental-post-pic-your.html


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