Thanks both you and
@poconojoe are very knowledgeable! I was planning on planting stuff in the gravel bed of the intake bay, cause I also love plants and they’d help with filtration. But at that point, with a decent layer of gravel and plants, I can’t think of the difference between the wetland and intake other than the direction of flow. Would that direction of flow make such a big difference in terms of biofiltration capacity? or maybe I shouldn’t have assumed plants can grow in an intake bay
As
@poconojoe said the intake bay takes the place of a skimmer, it is going to be hard to clean debris out of there if you have plants growing in the intake bay, Which will eventually cause it to clog.
You will still get the gravel in the water of an intake bay being part of the biofilter, as any wet surface will be colonized by beneficial bacteria, that is where any similarity ends to a wetland filter, though. There is also dwell time in a wetland filter if the water is passing through the planted area quickly then the plants aren’t as effective at pulling out nutrients.
Intake bays can house multiple pumps, which are pulling a lot of water into the area, take mine for instance it has a 10,000 and 3000 gph pump in it. The 3000 gph pump feeds my wetland filter and the 10,000 gph one feeds a waterfall, that is a lot a flow through the rock and gravel,