Who Would Have Thunk It

[Baccus]

While doing some research for a person in South Africa for how to remove suspected heavy metals from their water supply I stumbled across an article on National Geographic about using Banana Peel to remove toxins in water :congratulatory:. A researcher discovered that banana peels out preformed traditional chemicals used to remove heavy metals such as cooper from water. They not only dried and ground banana peels and placed them in flasks of water contaminated with heavy metals, they also built a filter and pushed contaminated water through the peels, both methods exceeded previous methods using silica, cellulose and aluminium oxide. The banana peel works by bonding the heavy metals to itself. Other plants that can also remove heavy metals from water include apple and sugar cane wastes, coconut fibres and peanut shells. Just thought this info might be very useful for everyone when they think about what to feed their shrimp or add to their tanks as an extra bit of something for the shrimps health.

[BlueBolts]

Just goes to show Mother Nature knows best...thanks for sharing the info....does it mention about dried banana leaves ?

[Baccus]

No they didn't mention using the leaves of Bananas but they might do a similar thing to the peel or even the stem of banana plants since they are so fiberous. Since everyone already knows the benefits of using IAL in tanks maybe the researchers should look into what it can do for removing toxins from the water too.

[torface]

This is awesome! Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

[KiwiBigD]

Pretty cool article mate, I can see a use for these as we don't need most heavy metals in our tanks, nice.

[Baccus]

It is rather interesting and produces more possibilities in using such things in canister filters. I can see it now using layers of coconut fibre, peanut husks/ shells and sugar cane as some of the bedding material in a filter. If nothing else it would certainly increase the mechanical filteration of removing solid wastes from the tank.

[Heavyd]

That is definitely going to be useful for any sensitive aquatic creatures we may wish to keep in the tanks. Thanks for sharing.

[Squiggle]

Wow, that's incredibly interesting, the potential possibilities are amazing, thanks for the info :victorious:

[Masta]

Definitely giving this a try! Amazing stuff!

[Baccus]

The question now is if using e.g. banana peels for such a purpose how long does the peel remain effective? Was thinking an easy test for home use would be to get a tub of water test it for chemicals, add banana peel and then retest the water every hour or so, until it tests negative for the chemicals tested for.