Slash and Burn... Well, Slash

I did some re-reading of case studies that looked at what the root causes of algae are and what to do about it. There conclusion was that for whatever reason, if phosphates were the factor limiting plant growth (as opposed to nitrates, light, CO2, etc.), then plants would outcompete algae. Now I thought I tried this earlier, but I think CO2 has always been one of my biggest limiters. That's why it helped when I first started adding Flourish Excel.

Now that I'm successfully injecting CO2 in the system (I got the pH down to ~7.4), I can prevent any other nutrients from limiting plant growth by resuming the Kent fertilizers (they're phosphate free). In this way, I hope to actually starve the tank of phosphates so that any that are produced are consumed by the plants. I got a phosphate tester and they are already quite low (nearly if not quite zero), so we already have a head start. I'd like to get an iron tester to make sure we're near the recommended 0.1 ppm. I considered getting Flourish potassium fertilizer, since a website that was based on the conclusions of the two case studies indicated high potassium levels will not promote algae. But Kent Freshwater Plant fertilizer has potash, so I'm hoping that will be sufficient.


I was sick of looking at all the besieged plants, so I hacked through most of the dying and/or algae-covered leaves so that the tank is actually looking pretty baren right now. I can only pray that I have really fixed the water chemistry and not crippled some of my ground plants by trimming down to a couple of leaves that will soon be overtaken by more algae. The ground plants were hacked down to the fewest leaves, but the greatest casualities were the foxtail and the rotala indica.