Planted floating treatment bed (FTB) is an innovative technique of removing nutrients from polluted water but limited in deep water and cold seasons. Periphyton was integrated into FTB for a hybrid floating treatment bed (HFTB) to improve its nutrient removal capacity. To assess its potential for treating nutrient-polluted rivers, HFTB was up-scaled from 5 L laboratory tanks to 350 L outdoor tanks and then to a commercial-scale 900 m section of polluted river. Plants and periphyton interacted in HFTB with periphyton limiting plant root growth and plants having shading effects on periphyton. Non-overlapping distribution of plants and periphyton can minimize the negative interactions in HFTB. HFTB successfully kept TN and TP of the river at less than 2.0 and 0.02 mg L (1), respectively. This study indicates that HFTB can be easily up-scaled for nutrients removal from polluted rivers in different seasons providing a long-term, environmentally-friendly method to remediate polluted ecosystems. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.