I'v kept freshwater and brackish water planted tanks, and used 2 diferent plants growing in/outside of the water, my nitrate always 0ppm, there no single spot of algae in the walls, eventhough I feed a lot due to many fish in the tank.
I came to the point that growing plants is the way to go for freshwater tank, I am trying to do the same for reef tank so I just added recently a mini scrubber to my refugium.