Drain and Flood System

[theotheragentm]

In hydroponics, I know they do flood and drain systems. I was curious if anyone has tried this with an aquarium. It would likely be a drain and flood system, since you would want it flooded more often than drained. You would also have to make sure your livestock (if any) and plants would be able to handle the time out of water. I would imagine no more than thirty minutes out in the air at a time. This is probably something most feasible with smaller tanks, pumping the water level down, and then having it drip back into the tank over 20 minutes or so, I'm curious how this would affect algae and general plant growth as it would be exposed to more CO2 in the air than underwater. Thoughts?

[Cory]

I'm not sure I see the benefit to flooding it? Typically people just create a "bog filter" like in a koi pond where the water is circulated to a tank and maybe it has 2 inches of water, and all the plants grow emersed in it. Algae won't grow in the air, so you can "rehab" anubias and such plants. All the new growth will be algae free but it can be hard to get algae off the old leaves even in the emersed state because it's humid enough for the algae to hold on. 

[theotheragentm]

43 minutes ago, Cory said:

I'm not sure I see the benefit to flooding it? Typically people just create a "bog filter" like in a koi pond where the water is circulated to a tank and maybe it has 2 inches of water, and all the plants grow emersed in it. Algae won't grow in the air, so you can "rehab" anubias and such plants. All the new growth will be algae free but it can be hard to get algae off the old leaves even in the emersed state because it's humid enough for the algae to hold on. 

This idea came to mind, because every month or so when a certain rock in my tank gets too green for my tastes, I pull it and leave it in the sun for half a day. Obviously that would not work for plants as it would kill them, but it sounds like you are suggesting that drying a plant out for a half hour a few times a day may not provide an environment to kill algae. Thanks for the response. I may still experiment with this in the future to satiate my own curiosity.