Figured I would post an update. I really should have started a journal.
After completely misreading and messing up my nitrate tests from day 1, I completely started over. Instead of doing magnesium or iron or playing with my fert dosage, I did nothing for almost a month aside from water changes and dosing 1ml of easy green a week. After reading posts here and watching more vids, I stopped caring so much about water parameters. Meaning, I stopped stressing over pH getting above 7.6 (except for that one random huge spike I had), stopped testing for ammonia every damn day, and stopped worrying about my KH not at being at the "ideal" level that we always read/hear about. I thank the AC vids and people here. I almost tried crushed coral. Glad I didn't. Because Corey's old vid on pH pretty much blew my mind.
What happened was pretty enlightening. 1st, my nitrates dropped to 5 ppm. Nothing really happened in the tank aside from the moss suffering. ARs looked the same and the new ARs that I had extra of from my other tank got wiped out. But the algae started to slow down. The left side of my tank (which gets hit with a lot of ambient sunlight) started to clear up. My water changes are once every 2 weeks because my nitrates never get above 20-25ppm.
When Nitrates hit around 10ppm, the plants started to grow (minus the AR). So I changed my lighting profile and added a longer siesta period (almost 4 hours) and increased the pure white light/max light levels to about 80 percent and did a "peak" style program versus a long plateau. Plants grew faster and my monte carlo is crawling further to the right. My red root floaters exploded. I've had to toss a good amount because it was blocking too much light out as well as the moss because the anubias were practically in the dark. My crypt is putting out pink leaves.
Today, nitrates are at 20ppm because I dosed a little heavier over the weekend (2ml). The algae started to grow a tad faster, but the plants still show new growth (minus the ARs). My rotalia is all the way at the top of the waterline now. Had to trim and still need to.
It's a water change week for me, so it'll probably bring the nitrates down to 10-15ppm. I was thinking of starting to dose Seachem Trace mid week, but will wait a little bit to see how things go.
And after all this I learned: ARs are damn hard to grow for me and I'm not ready yet and neither is my tank. And I'm ok with that!