The increased nitrates indicate a disturbance in the biological filtration process, it might actually be a combination of adding 20 living organisms which increased the bio load and stirring up detritus and debris from the re-scaping.
I can't count the times unfortunately that I've turned nicely functioning tanks into complete disasters from the urge to re-scape things. Going in a ripping up plants and moving things around in a tank that has matured and balanced itself is a massive disruption really and it takes awhile for things to even out again. I have doubts as to the CO2 system being all that much of a factor really, tank CO2 is fairly constant, fermentation can be unstable somewhat with room tempertaure changes etc.
Of course this is just an opinion based on my experiences, and I live in Iowa which most likely changes everything :shock:
I can't count the times unfortunately that I've turned nicely functioning tanks into complete disasters from the urge to re-scape things. Going in a ripping up plants and moving things around in a tank that has matured and balanced itself is a massive disruption really and it takes awhile for things to even out again. I have doubts as to the CO2 system being all that much of a factor really, tank CO2 is fairly constant, fermentation can be unstable somewhat with room tempertaure changes etc.
Of course this is just an opinion based on my experiences, and I live in Iowa which most likely changes everything :shock: