One of the things I took away from the recent SFBAAPS open house at Erik Leung's loft was the idea of aggressive nutrient dosing. You reach a point, as Erik mentioned, where you develop a strong sense of what you can get away with in terms of fertilization. He doses aggresively with iron, and doesn't have (or didn't admit to having) algae problems.

I thought I'd give that strategy a try.

I fertilize regularly with Kent Botanica Micro, K, Fe, and, most recently, Nitro. And, of course, I'm injecting CO2 at a constant 10-12 mg/L 9 hours a day. I heap just under 3WPG into the tank, also for 9 hours. Sometimes, if I smell an algae problem coming, I dial down to 3WPG for about five hours, the remaining four hours at under 2WPG.

Because I'm pretty zealous about water changes with KH-buffered water, and because the environment is so small (6-gallons), I rely often on test-kit readings for chemistry levels. Since the iron has gone up, overall plant growth has improved dramatically...aggressive water changes (plus Thor, the Norns, Lif and Lifthrasir, and snails) keep algae from organizing effectively. The Riccia love strong iron and CO2. Die-off of cryptos has diminished drastically. And we'll see what the introduction of nitrogen fertilizer does.