As far as I understand, heavy plant density means a better "green" bio filter as any NH4 is immediately taken up and converted. Hence no need for cycling such a tank when initially set up.
Another school of thought was that heavily planted tanks ate up the nutrients before the algae could get to them and therefore was a good method for algae control even after the intial break-in period.
Given the current practice of dosing enough of all nutrients so that there is *never* a deficiency, this method of algae control goes out the window, no? I've seen pictures of beautiful algae free healthy tanks that did not have lots of plant mass: some of Amano's tanks just to name some.
So with the current practice/thought, a less densely planted tank can also be pretty much algae free even with high light as long as the plants are never deprived of any of the nutrients. One just needs to adjust the dosing quantity accordingly, given the smaller plant mass.
Is this correct?
The reason I was thinking through this is that I was away from home for a month. When I came back, the plants had suffered enough that I had to do a very heavy pruning and even got rid of some plants (due to lack of nutrients I assume: lots of melting...). So the plant mass was reduced by about 40%.
My mind fell back on the old "I have to get a lot more plants in there quickly or else the algae is going to take over" instinct. That's when I started wondering about the truth of that.
Long post but would be really interested in hearing any opinions on this.
Another school of thought was that heavily planted tanks ate up the nutrients before the algae could get to them and therefore was a good method for algae control even after the intial break-in period.
Given the current practice of dosing enough of all nutrients so that there is *never* a deficiency, this method of algae control goes out the window, no? I've seen pictures of beautiful algae free healthy tanks that did not have lots of plant mass: some of Amano's tanks just to name some.
So with the current practice/thought, a less densely planted tank can also be pretty much algae free even with high light as long as the plants are never deprived of any of the nutrients. One just needs to adjust the dosing quantity accordingly, given the smaller plant mass.
Is this correct?
The reason I was thinking through this is that I was away from home for a month. When I came back, the plants had suffered enough that I had to do a very heavy pruning and even got rid of some plants (due to lack of nutrients I assume: lots of melting...). So the plant mass was reduced by about 40%.
My mind fell back on the old "I have to get a lot more plants in there quickly or else the algae is going to take over" instinct. That's when I started wondering about the truth of that.
Long post but would be really interested in hearing any opinions on this.
