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Animal waste disposal is of increasing concern due to larger and more concentrated livestock operations with less land available for manure application. This greenhouse study investigates the feasibility of treating dairy lagoon effluent using a wetland treatment system with advanced phosphorus removal. A synthetic wastewater, modeling pollutant levels in dairy wastewater, was applied to a greenhouse-scale wetland treatment system consisting of two sets of wetland cells with different retention times. Concentrations of nutrients were recorded at different stages of the wetland system and evaluated to aid in the development of design parameters for a pilot scale wetland treatment system. It was determined that greater nutrient reduction corresponds to a longer retention time in the wetland cells.