How Healthy plants prevent algae growth?

[adidasvintage]

Understand that healthy plants do not exist in tank with algae (minimum). What did healthy plants did that obstruct the growth of algae?

Also understand that algae grows when the plants lack of some things to photosynthesis. That “things” could be CO2 or fertilizers (direct) or water circulation (indirect).

Assuming water circulation and CO2 is not the limiting factor. Left with fertilizer and so any shortage of it will halt plants photo process, leading to unhealthy plant and indirectly promote algae growth.

Thus EI dosing comes into the picture. From my readings, fertilizers do not have direct link to algae growth and even if dosing high amount of KNO3, K2SO4, KH2PO4, etc will not promote algae growth. Any shortage of either N or P or K will not link directly to algae growth. EI was created to allow aquarist to concentrate on tuning the correct required CO2 and eliminate other factors.

Although EI being introducing excess amount of nutrients to plants, at what level of excess will it be consider not harmful to flora/fauna? If I do not perform weekly water change and continue EI, what would happen after 1 month? Flora starts to melt and fauna starts to die due to high toxic concentration in water? Theory speaking, high fertilizer dosing should not create algae but as flora starts to die off, algae will start to grow?

So my question is still how do healthy plants prevent algae growth? Are they producing some chemicals (Like the movie “The happening” whereby plants detect danger and produce some airborne chemicals to protect themselves while killing humans) to kill or stop algae growth?

My understandings and concept could be wrong but so far this is what I have gathered from the web. Please kindly give some comments and advise on my questions. Thanks in advance.

[thebaldingaquarist]

Wow. this is an interesting set of questions.

Before i say anything, i would like to ascertain that i am no guru about plants. I have a simplistic (some people say too simplistic) view on this ferting and plants thing.

To explain my view, i need to put the reader in my world. in my world there are 2 things flora in my tank. 1 plant and 1 algae. both flora require.. maybe,... 4 elements (labelled A,B,C and D below) to survive.

The requirements are as follows (all in ppm, a kind of concentration measurement) :
Plant
Element A : 30ppm
Element B : 5 ppm
Element C : 20 ppm
Element D : 50ppm

Algae
Element A : 3ppm
Element B : 1 ppm
Element C : 2 ppm
Element D : 5ppm

One glance and you can tell Algae requires less to survive.This is true in the real world as well.

Back to my tank, when i measure my tank... my parameters could be

Element A : 10ppm
Element B : 5 ppm
Element C : 2 ppm
Element D : 10ppm

In my tank, i would be expecting the algae to thrive and the plant to slowly diminish.. if nothing happens. This is because the tank parameters are in favour of the algae. it does not have enough for the plants to survive. so... if i decide to beef up one of the elements and keep it const...

Element A : 300 ppm
Element B : 5 ppm
Element C : 2 ppm
Element D : 10 ppm

What happens? Algae still thrives (because the conditions are still in its favour).. certain functions of the plant might resume.. but over time.. the plant will still diminish.

SO what happens when i decide to beef up ALL elements in my tank and keep it constant.

Element A : 300ppm
Element B : 500 ppm
Element C : 200 ppm
Element D : 500ppm

Expectedly both algae and plant will thrive. but in fact plant will thrive more. this is because plant is of a higher order lifeform. the plant has a faster, more efficient way of taking in the element it requires. so even though the requirements for algae is met, it loses out due to the advanced features (relatively compared to algae) found in the plant.

I now know that the higher the nutrient level, the better it is for the plants.. then why not.. just dump the whole bottle of fert in? This is because at higher levels of the elements, it becomes toxic to the cells that make up the higher lifeforms. fish, shrimp and other higher lifeforms have increased sensitivity to the elements compared to lower life forms like algae..

Hope this is helpful...

[mukyo]

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you are awesome sir

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[adidasvintage]

Hi Erctheanda,

Thanks for the fast and descriptive reply.

Have another question: A tank that is currently troubled by algae problem (eg. green water, BGA, GSA, etc) but not at the severe level. If everything is brought back to the correct level, including CO2, light, water circulation, ferts. Will the improved plant growth disrupt, stops and ends the growth of the algae?

[Shadow]

Erctheanda, good simplification

Plants will recover but take time, during that time algae may take over and choke the plant to dead.

If you look at Erctheanda explanation, even in good plant condition algae still grow. This is where algae cleaning crew is important to keep algae in check.

[Dodofish]

Hi Erctheanda,

Thanks for the fast and descriptive reply.

Have another question: A tank that is currently troubled by algae problem (eg. green water, BGA, GSA, etc) but not at the severe level. If everything is brought back to the correct level, including CO2, light, water circulation, ferts. Will the improved plant growth disrupt, stops and ends the growth of the algae?

You can't stop the growth of algae. They co-exist with plants growth in the tank, but if your dosage is optimal, usually algae will be at minimal.

i have previously experiment with very high light and heavy dosage which result in very good plants growth such that I get to see new sprouts of glosso literally on a bi-daily basis. Then I decided I should cut down on my lightings and dosage as the glosso has covered almost every part of my tank.

This big mistake cost me my efforts and the plants which I grew. In return the algae took over, I got pissed decided to rescape but broke my tank when I tried to wash it.

the other thing that I observed is, each individual plant type has a different need in nutrients elements. So it's impossible to keep algae at null, with healthy lush plants. So if you use erctheanda illustration, there will always be a nutrient element which is higher and this depends on your plants mix.

different nutrients also help develop plants in different ways. Some nutrients result in nice big leaves, some helps in rooting and spreading (additional dosage with co2 means faster growth) and some help the plants in flowering.

Hope it helps, I am just sharing based on my experience. Not a guru as well.

tips though, find those bros with blog link signature. Some of their sharing is really helpful, and it cut short the pain of investment.

[tetrakid]

This may sound unacceptable, but my problem is not enough algae. I like algae, but not too much.

Previously I had two Chinese Algae Eaters (small white fish) to clean up my tank. After they had cleaned up the whole tank, they died due to lack of food.

Now I have two Nerite horned snails which I want to continue keeping after one year, but they are underfed due to lack of algae. Very sad.

I also like to have green water but it seems I can never manage to have it.

[WingCher]

Read Tom Barr's post in this sticky. Post #11
http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...quot-PMDD-quot

[tetrakid]

Read Tom Barr's post in this sticky. Post #11
http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...quot-PMDD-quot

Thank you. If I can successfully grow algae, I will be very happy for my snails and the fish too. I have noticed that fish are happy to be with algae.

[Ingen]

Previously I had two Chinese Algae Eaters (small white fish) to clean up my tank. After they had cleaned up the whole tank, they died due to lack of food.

I know this is off topic but I noticed my SAE also suffering the same fate. However, I noticed the fish is ignoring green BBA and white hair algae starting to grow from my newly tied fissden rocks. Unsure if it is already too late...

Based on the discussion on algae, does it mean that if overdose of everything will promote growth of plants and algae concurrently? If the dosage is optimal, with little extra dosage, plants will grow well and algae minimum as no much nutrient left?

[Shadow]

Algae requirement is very-very little, negligible. Meaning it will still grow in the tank even though you measure zero in all of the nutrient. In other word you can't possibly fighting algae by limiting the nutrient.