Lazy Plants?

[William Lynch]

By providing our aquarium plants with liquid fertilizers and root tabs to grow, do we actually decrease their ability to use the nitrites and nitrates in our water? Does it lower their water purifying abilities because they don't have to work as hard to get nutrients?

[Flumpweesel]

To my mind (and I'm sure I've heard and read it somewhere) If you are using trace element fertz that don't have the nitrates in to feed the plants then you increase the plants ability to use up the waste chemicals in your aquarium. By helping to support healthy growth. (Vitamins don't stop you eating)

Root tabs and nitrate fertz let you have more plants than your fish can support.  Plants would grow to the level of waste in the tank then start to die back until they hit a balance fertz let us control the balance