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My Riccia isn't pearling

I have a 120 gallon tank with valisneria, rotala rotundifolia, echinodorus tenellus,
hygrophila difformis, hygrophila polysperma, cobomba carolinia, glossostigma,
ludwigia, cardamine, bacopa monnieri, C. balansea, hydrocotle leucocephala,
and a few other plants.  There is 440 watts of flourescent light 11 hours per
day.  Each day I add 8ml of fertilizer.  The fertilizer is an equal mixture of
Red Sea Flora Fe, Red Sea Flora Vit, Leaf Zone, and a KNO3 solution I mix
myself from stump remover.  DIY CO2 using an Aqualine Buschke reactor
(I recommend these if for no other reason than they provide hours of enjoyment
watching the little bubbles go round and round).

No real filtration, though I do have a 250gph pump in the tank for circulation
and it has a large sponge pre-filter on it.

There is a very small amount of green filamentous algea but you have to look
for a while to find it.  I never clean the front glass, though it does have a slight
dusting of brown algae, not enough to obscure the view.  The water is not
perfectly clear, but clear enough.

The plants grow well, and I have to cut them back all the time, but I recently
got some riccia and some foxtail.  The riccia is growing, but I don't get any
bubbles like in the Amano photographs.  The foxtail old growth is not
growing, but it is putting out new shoots that are much smaller than the
ones I got from AAG.

In fact, the entire tank used to pearl much more than it does now.  I had not
been doing any water changes for a few months, only adding RO water to
replace evaporation.  I did some water changes a week or so ago, maybe
20% in total, and this did seem to pick up the pearling rate a bit, though it
did not last long.

I am thinking there is some element I am missing, but I have no idea what
it is.

I have no luck with test kits.  The local water is fairly hard with permanent
hardness and has a LOT of carbonate hardness.  The water is always
alkaline dispite the CO2.  I have never been able to detect any really
signifigant level of Fe or NO3.  Measurements are not going to help
me with this.  In my school days I was a fine theoretical chemist, but my
lab experiments never showed the results I knew they had to have.

Thanks,
Rod