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Need opinins/help



Hi all,
This is probly going to be a bit long so please bear with me
  Anyway long story short I bought a house and moved my tank, pretty much
lost everything(6in breeding angels etc). Re-did tank.

Now have redone 72gal tank with about 8 tetras,2 plecos and 3 corys. Plus 3
7in amazon swords, 1 20in sword, 2 wisteria, and 3 crypts, and a couple
other things I forgot the name of.

Problem is I'm new at planted tanks so seem to have some issues. PH was 7.0
(now 6.8 with DIY CO2) it was maintained with Proper PH 7.0, I just (past
couple of days) found out that the Proper PH = bad for plants.
ammonia/nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 120-150ppm!! yes its way high.
and GH=11, KH=14ish
Obviously we are off the charts here in some areas.

Filtering with a fluval 403, and running 2 power heads. Lighting provided by
an All-glass twin strip hood.

So I have super cloudy water, Fish seem OK, (no signs of stress), Large
sword is starting to yellow out, I'm assuming hardness/proper PH has leached
the iron (just found out it does that too).

Anyway what I plan to do is major water change (30% or so) tonite. Do some
minor work to my DIY Co2 reactor. Then I'm going to try the Tap water filter
from Aquarum Pharm to do another change with de-ionized water in a couple of
days(waiting for filter to arrive). And depending on things maybe add a
water softener pillow.

The question is: Is this a good plan of action or not and what
else/different would you reccomend? I really don't want to lose the plants.

Also I'm running 2X2liter bottles of DIY Co2, is this enough/ not enough/ to
much? I'm using Gravel tube with power head flowing into it as a reactor
(pics below)
www.blacknite.net/fish/

Thanks Much!!