Niko is this an experiment of sorts. Pretty much opposite of most nature aquariums where you have heavy plant load and low fish load, combined with good filtration, healthy plants and water change and you have pristine tank.
Oh yes it is a big experiment. You got that right. I want to see if my views on organics make sense. If I can create a pristinely clean tank with increased flow, certain flow direction, and a lot of fish that eat a lot then maybe I actually know something about how to run a planted tank.
I still have Cladophora that is hesitant to decide if it want to stay or go. It's pretty amazing that without CO2 and only 1 slow growing plant I can keep the Cladophora at bay. But it is there anyway. At this point about 100 Amanos will make this rather empty tank 100% algae free. But I don't have any Amanos. So I will be experimenting with adding CO2, upping the light and a very careful fertilizing regime. Or maybe I will try what Tex_Gal and Digital_Gods suggested for the Cladophora - 3 day blackout and then stop all pumps and spot treat the weakened Cladophora with H202.
The way I fertilize lets me have a very clear understanding on what needs to be done should problems arise. In most cases if you want to stop dead the growth of any algae all you do is a big water change. Or you fertilize more giving the plants a boost. Your choice, but the main point is you know what to do and you even have 2 ways to go about it.
With my fertilizing regime you supply everything in unreadable amounts - less than 0 (and in the very beginning less than 0.1). The amounts of fertilizers are increased as the plant mass increases. But it is all very gradual and always kept at the bare minimum. Interestingly enough if you stop fertilizing no issues develop - the system basically depletes itself from nutrients in less than 1 day and it starts to grow very slowly even under strong light. Algae does not show up. I wanted to call this approach "Sub-Zero" because the fertilizers are supplied in amounts less than 0. But maybe it could be called "Zero Momentum" or "Responsive system" because you can literally stop or accelerate the plant growth in the matter of 1 day - meaning the tank has very little inertia, or momentum.
To me knowing how to adjust for mistakes is basically winning the game. My recent posts about filtration have been exactly about that - knowing what is going on.