Rooted Plants

• To: Aquatic-Plants <Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com>
• Subject: Rooted Plants
• From: David Webb <DAWB.DSKPO33B at dsks62_itg.ti.com>
• Date: Thu, 21 Sep 95 15:10:54 CDT

>From: MADSEN at ELMSG_WES.ARMY.MIL
>Date: Thu, 21 Sep 95 10:31:33 CST
>Subject: RE: Aquatic Plants Digest V1 #24
>
>I am replying to  the comment about rooted plants outcompeting algae
>for nutrients.  Scientifically, there is no good basis for this statement
>if you mean nutrients in the water.  Research has shown that rooted
>plants take most of their required nitrogen and phosphorus from the
>sediment, not the water.  Algae are much more efficient at taking up
>nutrients from the water than rooted plants.  However, the dense plants
>will keep the sediment nutrients from leaching into the water, which
>then in turn promotes algal growth.

Can I get you to follow up just a bit more with this?  Are you referring to 
terrestrial or semi-terrestrial plants when you refer to rooted plants, or are 
you also referring to fully aquatic plants?  If all or almost all aquarium 
plants that we are interested in get almost all of their nutrients from the 
roots, this could mean that the daily fertilization that many of us do is more 
helpful to algae than our plants.  It also doesn't adequately explain the 
obvious reduction in nitrates in my aquarium, which has no substrate 
circulation at this time.

Thanks for your continued input.

David W. Webb
Enterprise Computing Provisioning
Texas Instruments Inc. Dallas, TX USA
(214) 575-3443 (voice)  MSGID:       DAWB
(214) 575-4853 (fax)    Internet:    dwebb at ti_com
(214) 581-2380 (pager)  Text Pager:  pgr at msg_ti.com Subj:PAGE:David Webb

• Prev: Where do the readers of this list live?
• Next: Re: Want Val. torta/tortissima
• Index: Aquatic-Plants Mailing List