# Sticky  Why a well planted tank doesn't have algae



## elTwitcho

There's alot of posts regarding algae circulating around here, and generally it seems to be what keeps people away from planted tanks. The funny thing, is that a planted tank is far far easier to keep algae free than a non planted tank. Even more so if you're injecting CO2 and using over 2 wpg. The basic premise is, that algae needs phosphate to survive, and plants eat phosphate. There is a way to set up your tank so that the plants eat all the phosphate available for algae, and if you can do it, you will never have any appreciable amount of algae again.

First, a bit about plant growth. For plants to grow, they need nutrients, CO2 and light. The one of these elements that is in shortest supply will dictate how fast the plants grow. That means, that if you have more nutrients and CO2 than you need but not enough light, they will only grow as fast as the light allows them to. Or if you have tons of light and lots of CO2 but not enough nutrients, the plants will only grow until the nutrients are exhausted. They can not, and do not use up the other growth elements if one of them is missing.

Now, you're always going to have a certain degree of phosphates in your aquarium. These phosphates are what causes you to have algae. If you have no phosphates, you will have no algae. Now, imagine for a moment what the limmiting factor in your aquarium is, if it's CO2, you probably have left over nutrients in the water and light to spare but no CO2 in the water (or very very little at any rate). Imagine for instance if it's nitrate that is your limmiting factor for plant growth, your water will probably have plenty of CO2, nutrients other than nitrate, and light, but zero nitrate.

So what if, you provided your plants with everything they need to grow but phosphates? What if you provided plants with Iron, Nitrate, Micronutrients, light and CO2 but not phosphate, what would happen then? Well, the plants would grow until the phosphates were consumed up until nothing. This in turn would mean there'd be some nutrients in your water, CO2, light and Iron, but no phosphates. It would also mean that algae would die almost completely.

I would like to take credit for this brilliant idea, but unfortunately it is not mine. It's basically a summation of something called the "Sears/Conlin paper" in which they tried this experiment and proved it to be true. It IS possible to make your plants eat up all the phosphates in the water, and it IS possible to have almost no algae as a result. People think well planted tanks are a ton of work and will require constant algae cleaning, in fact that's completely the opposite. If you can give your plants everything that they need to thrive, they will starve your algae to death and other than pruning and remembering to add fertilizer every few days you won't actually have that much work to do at all.

It's food for thought in setting up your next planted tank, or if you're having problems with algae in your current tank. For those interested in the original paper, it can be found right here

http://www.cam.org/%7Etomlins/algae.html#abstract

Basic summary, with CO2, Iron, Nitrate and a micronutrient solution, your plants will outcompete algae. I plan on using this method myself once my fertilizer arrives in the mail.


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## shoe997bed263

great info this should be pinned


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## Sheppard

awesome post twitch


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## jackburton

good job el


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## elTwitcho

And as an added bonus, I'm going to be doing this method in the near future when my micronutrient mix arrives so I'll keep you all updated on how it goes.


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## compton ass steve

PIN IT!


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## Husky_Jim

compton ass steve said:


> PIN IT!
> [snapback]910095[/snapback]​


I won't cause i hate twitcho!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!








j/k Nice post man!
But i haver to add that until you find the balance of it you will get algae 95%!!!


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## joefish219

wow that was nice.

what potted plant do they use in the paper?








j/k Nice post man!
But i haver to add that until you find the balance of it you will get algae 95%!!!








[snapback]910308[/snapback]​[/quote]


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## PacmanXSA

Informative post.

Why is it that the plants get at the phosphate in the tank first and not the algae?

Pac


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## elTwitcho

PacmanXSA said:


> Informative post.
> 
> Why is it that the plants get at the phosphate in the tank first and not the algae?
> 
> Pac
> [snapback]924880[/snapback]​


Who knows? They're just better at it than the algae for some reason.


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## marco

very good info Richard. like always.

thanks for sharing it with us bro


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## Mughal

Plants have specialized cells that fix phosphates, algae are unicellular things which can't specialize in anything since they have to do everything themselves, this makes them a smaller functioning unit, but it also means that they are not as good at most jobs than organizms specializing in those jobs.


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## channafreak

Mughal said:


> Plants have specialized cells that fix phosphates, algae are unicellular things which can't specialize in anything since they have to do everything themselves, this makes them a smaller functioning unit, but it also means that they are not as good at most jobs than organizms specializing in those jobs.
> [snapback]925717[/snapback]​


Yea definately. More complex plants perform so many more tasks at once because of specialized cells. Not to mention the storage capabilities. Kind of a "smash and grab" instead of having to utilize certain molecules as the operation is taking place.


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## richiecarw

cool stuff man! this forums great anything you need to know about p's and this tanks all on the one site!


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## Uncle Rico

why do you have to add fertilizer every few days? Dont you just add it in proportion to the water changes? And do you just estimate the amount of gallons of the water change when adding fertilizer?


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## FishGameRock

Seems like it would depend on how fast you want your plants to grow and how frequently you do water changes. If you only do one every two weeks and your plants eat up the phosphates in 3 days you'd run low too quick and have the plants die back. Of course I only do saltwater and this is a guess.


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## pinakap0gi

do plants really prevent algae or they only reduce it? I saw a tank somewhere in this forum, his tank was filled with plants but still there are algae sticking in the glass.. i'm confused!









here it is, look at his updated photos.. hehe!

http://www.piranha-fury.com/pfury/index.php?showtopic=100221


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## jman785

Algae(s) not only need Phosphates..they also need Nitrates. But if you remove one of the two of them...the algae can't survive. But the plants your trying to grow...also require a certain amount of both phosphates and nitrates in order to thrive. Great post.


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## Coldfire

Great information!


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## plantbrain

Except Paul and Kevin where wrong









Algae are not limited by excess PO4.
That was barbarically disproven about 11 years by myself.

Simple, if you accept that "excess" PO4 causes algae and that having less is the reason for less algae, if we add excess PO4 to a PO4 limited planted tank, in all cases we should see an increase in algae correct?

What Paul and Kevin did not do that I did was test their own hypothesis to see if it was really true, they took correlation to mean cause.

You cannot do that, correlation does not imply cause.

I added 1-2-3ppm of pure PO4 to my tank. I had nolgae, I did however have awesome plant growth, less algae than other folks, was able to grow more species better and healthier than the other folks that where doing this approach.

Here's a tank that gets 3ppm per week of PO4 and I can tell you, it's a lot nicer and has a higher bioload than either of Kevins or Paul's aquariums.

Note, the article is quite old that you ar ereferring too, it is very helpful in terms of adding fertilizers except for the PO4, which is all I added to the routine.





































So if you accept what they claim is true, then where is the algae in my tanks as well as many others that add PO4 routinely?

It cannot be true.
You add PO4 to a weed choked tank, you get more weeds, not algae.

*Note, this does not say what causes algae, it does however say what does not cause algae*.

That is another question and another test.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## oddball_freak

good stuff


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## gavinol

Really nice info..UV kills water borne. They are great in reducing diseases by killing them in the water. Fish can still get a disease but disease parasites in the water are irradicated making the cycle much shorter


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## Onkiebonkie

In my eyes this PO4 talk isn't completely covering the whole story. It is all about the Redfield ratio (RR) imo. In other words it's the ratio C:N (Carbon:Nitrogenhosphor). The American *Alfred C. Redfield (1890-1983)* proved the perfect ratio for plant-growth to be 106:16:1. To a further extend we can say the ratio is C:N:Fe/Zn/Mn:Cu/Mo/Co/etc. That would be 106:16:1:0.01:0.001...... But the N ratio is the most important.

According to the RR, presence of algae is not only depending on how much nutrition there is, but also at which ratio these nutrients are available for the plants and algae. Blue algae were never found at a ratio >29. Green algae have a hard time at a ratio <10. To say it otherwise, blue algae are fond of low ratio's (<10) and green algae thrive at ratio's >20

So, we can combat algae by adjusting the ratio of nutrition according to this principle (provided that all other required factors needed for good plant-growth are met). Simple, isn't it?!....

try to keep the ratio between 10-20.


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## Bacon Of Time

Guys what produsses Phosphates?
Do i have to buy something or is it for firsh first?
Im fairly new to fish and right new to plants.


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## Akash the winner

Just because, algae need some dirtyness to grow...if u planned a well neat aquarium then it is hard to get algae..does ur tank has any lower fishes?? Like catfish?


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