Quote:
Originally Posted by Carissa
If it's true that plants prefer NH4+ and need to expend energy converting nitrate to NH4+ before using it, and they take in NH4+ faster than they will the same amount of nitrate, would it not make sense to have as little biological filtration as possible on a planted tank - thus making more of the nitrogen available to the plants as NH4+ instead of the plants competing with the biological filtration for NH4+ and then having to resort to nitrate for their needs? Would this result in faster growth? On a low tech tank, of course, since we wouldn't want to have to fertilize NH4+ due to the algae issues it may present.
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Another more simple question: would you rather make a system that has less NH4 in case the plants faltered for some reason(say CO2 variation) , or one that is solely dependent on plant uptake?
What happens if you pruned say 705 of the plant biomass back the next day to the NH4 levels?
I'd rather have a good biofilter and backup for NH4 vs having a tiny bit more for the plants. If anything, I generally want to slow growth, but do it via lights.
Regards,
Tom Barr