Fertiliser and Nutrient level?

[Mr.Shenanagins]

Plant health depends on other factors as well - competition and overcrowding from surrounding species

I feel like this point is not talked about enough. There is very little info about which plants tolerate these conditions and those that don’t.

 

[Pepere]

Since getting involved in the planted aquarium hobby, I have taken to stdying submerged plant growth in natural bodies of water fairly closely…

Lets just say, algae infested and festooned plants is in no way a rarity in nature…

So. If you have algae infested plants in your aquarium, just say you are going for a natural biotope…

 

[Nat]

Since getting involved in the planted aquarium hobby, I have taken to stdying submerged plant growth in natural bodies of water fairly closely…

Lets just say, algae infested and festooned plants is in no way a rarity in nature…

So. If you have algae infested plants in your aquarium, just say you are going for a natural biotope…

Personally from my personal experience, I think it is rare, I never see algae infested plants in nature just yet, only rocks. But it could just be because where I live. I don’t have algae in my outdoor bucket pond as well using my own method.

 

[TRyan]

One last detail I want to add on, with regards to plant dominance and high light/nutrient levels.
A very common statement folks make is that if you use high light and/or high nutrient levels, CO2 must also be high to match.
This statement is not true in all situations.

Ultimately, it is plant health that determines algae outcomes in a well planted tank, not that higher CO2 allows higher nutrient uptake and therefore less algae. So if your plant selection can grow well with low levels of CO2, then you can run high light, low CO2 without much issues. (such as my low tech tank below).

There are always combinations that work more easily than others:
High CO2, low light, some nutrient availability, high plant dominance - easiest combi for algae free tank
Low CO2, high light, poor or excessive nutrient availability, low plant dominance - worst combi for algae free tank.

Your keeping the plant selection happy is what your nutrients/CO2/light needs to be.
Only growing low CO2 requirement plants? Then CO2 is less critical, though the boost in growth rates with higher CO2 can allow tanks to out grow problems. Wasting time over-tuning CO2 in such scenarios is counter productive.

Have high CO2 requirement plants and under inject? Problematic for sure.

The same applies for plants nutrients needs. Over tuning nutrients when growing plants that not demanding nutrient-wise, waste of time. And not tuning nutrients enough when growing nutrient demanding species, similarly gives poor results.

What is severely under-tuned in most hobbyists tank I find, is the plant horticultural care aspect. 95% of all forum posts across all aquatic plant forums look to nutrients/light/CO2 to solve their problems. A lot of plant problems are not tied to just availability of growth parameters. Plant health depends on other factors as well - competition and overcrowding from surrounding species, natural aging, compaction or organic waste accumulation in the substrate, how old growth is handled. And these things are difficult to describe, so the human mind likes to go back to talking about nutrients/CO2/light because these are easily measured and quantifiable. Folks would rather time typing thousand word essays describing how a 0.01 ppm change in their boron levels is what made their plant grow 0.1% better this week, rather than just get their hands wet, do a proper uprooting and dividing of their plants which will actually give 300% better growth in the next week. This nutrient (or rather parameter targetting trap) has existed on forums since day 1, and it has never faded much.

View attachment 18920View attachment 18921

This is a great looking tank!

I'm curious, though. It appears that every plant in this tank is on your list of plants that do well with low light. Above you state that the easiest combo for algae free tanks are high CO2, low light, high plant mass, some nutrients. This tank appears that it would fall under that category. Yet, this tank seems contradictory, perhaps by design? You have low light plants under high light and low CO2.

Is this tank for experimental purposes to test your limits? If I wanted to run a tank with this exact list of plants, would it be better to run it with low CO2 and high light or high CO2 with low light? What would the nutrient levels look like between the two different setups?

 

[Dennis Wong]

This is a great looking tank!

I'm curious, though. It appears that every plant in this tank is on your list of plants that do well with low light. Above you state that the easiest combo for algae free tanks are high CO2, low light, high plant mass, some nutrients. This tank appears that it would fall under that category. Yet, this tank seems contradictory, perhaps by design? You have low light plants under high light and low CO2.

Is this tank for experimental purposes to test your limits? If I wanted to run a tank with this exact list of plants, would it be better to run it with low CO2 and high light or high CO2 with low light? What would the nutrient levels look like between the two different setups?

This is a good question.
Running this setup with lower light will have less algae risk, however, the plants will grow a tad less dense and the forms may be abit more stretched. The tank works because the soil substrate beneath the sand cap is generating some CO2 through decomposition, enough that the pairing with the higher light levels still work out ok. If it was entirely carbon deficient, then running it with lower light is definitely safer from an algae point of view, as I think the plants would be so weakened by the deficient in carbon that higher light levels would probably introduce algae with much greater certainty.

In most of my setups, I use more light than I would recommend most folks, to get better density/color. I do lower light levels if algae makes a regular occurrence.