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Math Modeling for a planted tank

I have been playing with a computer base ecosystem model program developed
by some researchers at UC math base ecology department. I think it has some
very broad base applications and can be modified to suit aquarium plant
tanks(it could be marketed and sold pretty cheap also being relatively
simple to change and modify at this point).
Basically you could enter a set of default parameters and then pick your
state variables. If you did large water changes, you could set the volume,
source water make up and time in between(or continuous water changes even).
A whole list of parameters could easily be added to this program. But as the
program gets more complicated so do the resulting predictions. Setting the
parameters that are the most meaningful(without getting to complex) and then
testing to see the closeness of fit with real tanks is a goal of modeling.
How useful is the model? Which variables are the most important? Daphnia
biomass or salinity are not really good choices for our tanks. But N03, NH4,
water exchange/changes, PO4,K, traces, light duration, herbivory intensity,
pruning intensity, CO2 levels etc all would be reasonable.........even
substrate nutrient capacity.

Some limits would need to be applied to the model. I may try to alter a pre
existing program for folks to play with. The first one will not be as broad
based or complex as many of you might like. That is kind of the point. This
way we can figure out which variables are or are not important to the model.
The future models can be adapted, added to and changed.

I'm okay at predicting some algae blooms in a plant tank. I think with that
knowledge I may be able to construct a program model with a decent set of
default parameters.
You can go in and edit the levels each one at time or all of them from the
default settings. Many of the settings are already in place. Some of the
testing needs still to be done to set some of the parameters. It would be a
fun project though.

You could predict with a computer model the chance of algae if you add more
traces beyond your edited response or if you added to much NO3 or not enough
CO2 and/or if your plant growth would be higher or lower.
You could look at your output graphically to see if the system is stable or
unstable.
You could also pick whether you wish to view the plant output, algae output,
fish output(lethal ranges of NO3/NH4/CO2) or all of them in a summary.

 You could see what effects particular parameters have on a system. For
instance, if you added another 10ppm of K it would not have much effect on
the system(20ppm of K to 30ppm of K). If on the other hand you went from
5ppm of NO3 to 20ppm of NO3, this would likely not be the case.

Even a plant only program would be fun to play with.

Regards, 
Tom Barr