That's a very interesting wiki entry, written by Ms. Walstead, which happens to support the hypothesis espoused by her book, which is referenced when you click her name, sold by Amazon.
I've written and read my fair share of technical articles. The wiki entry does not seem to be written by someone familiar with technical writing, the writing more resembles an article written for casual magazines. Even the Walstead method, "...a natural planted tank with a substrate containing a soil underlayer" has already been independently done by aquarists ever since someone invented the tank.
Having said that, it appears she has done her due diligence on her research. I'll take her at her word since I'm not going to check out every one of her references to look at the studies. She is correct in that the mantra has always been plants take up nitrates. Shakaho, you might do well to quote that wiki page and her book every time the question of plants and nitrates come up and see what the others say.
I do see a few flaws in her wiki entry, but I don't have any problem in the idea. By lower plants, I mean ones like duckweed and algae, which is in line with what she said. Higher plants would be the more complex ones, and it is already the general consensus that bacteria colonize the leaves.
I suspect that everyone will have their own story. My own experience is that I have massive amounts of media, duckweed and hornwort. I've never found ammonia or nitrites in my testing but I've never been able to get rid of that 20ppm nitrate despite the number of plants. By that wiki entry, surely the plants would have taken up nitrates after all the bio media and plants have exhausted the ammonia or nitrites, but the nitrates are still there.
