Jacky,

you asked:
>Q1: I know you have used strawberries as well as basil for
>removal of P from trout tank effluent.
>Is there any significant difference in their efficiencies in P
>removal with these plants?
>Have you tried other plants, herbs,  ?

A1: Using the CPS, we have only tried lettuce and basil. Plants
vary in their P requirements and removal kinetics, based on literature.
So my best recommendation to get a comparison for the nutrient
removal capacity of different plants is to compare their fertility
recommendations for production in the field.

>Q2: (a) The total P in brewery wastewater is 7-14 mg/litre for
>breweries that use about 3-5 m3 of water per m3 beer produced
>(Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 1991).  The total N
>in brewery WW is 45-65 mg/litre.
>(your trout effluent has 0.7 mg/l P and 25 mg NO3-N/litre).
>Temp. is 22-28 C.
>In the Sonoma site, BOD of 1500 mg/l was reduced
>to <10 mg/l and COD of 2500 mg/l to <50 mg/l.
>
>With this limited information, what would your immediate
>concerns be if you are going to use brewery waste water
>for e.g. lettuce ?

A1:You have plenty of N and P to grow the plants, but based on the BOD
of brewery waste at the Sonoma facility, if your brewery waste has a
similar BOD, that would probably be too high. Our BOD is around 20 and
we get a significant accumulation of solids by the time the plants are
harvested after 24 days in the system. Longer term crops would
accumulate more solids in the root zone. As I stated earlier, we did not
observe any negative effects of solids accumulation, but at some point
one would expect to. You probably have enough N; you would want a N:P
ratio of around 7 for lettuce. We had excess N in our effluent relative
to P.  We removed about 150-200kg P/ha. I think that the system is
ideally suited for dilute effluents. It can take quite a bit of
greenhouse space to remove nutrients from more concentrated effluents.

Paul