Horrific algae explosion, stopped by snail infestation

So this is my first attempt at growing plants in an aquarium. I recently had the worst take over of hair/thread algae, as well as a BBA outbreak. I am still fighting the good fight and have a few questions, but first the backstory.


After researching a fair bit, I bought a 40 gallon tank in februaury, and set it up with aquatic plant soil, 110 watts of CF lighting, and an XP2 filter. I put a pair of Crypt, a few bunches of Dwarf Sagitarius, a good amount of Cabomba, and a large Amazon sword. Doses of micronutrients and K were twice wekly, and liquid CO2 daily. I attempted a DIY CO2 but somehow failed miserably, and need to get it running again.

I added Nitrates and Phosphorous to the regiment, and the algae exploded after only a few days. Green hairs and threads, staghorn and BBA. Everywhere. The only one I could remove by hand was Staghorn, and the other two just took its place. I stopped trying to remove it or fertilize, planning on throwing out the plants and starting over once the algea died off. After a week the algae had taken over and coated evrything. Green thread reached across the tank and black fuzz grew on everything (I have pics if anyone wants to see the horror). Then my tank decided to clean itself. The little snails that had been hanging out decided to raise some families. And they went crazy with it, by my best estimate I have 150+ tiny snails. They cleaned off the Crypt so that it is spotless, and are halfway through the Sag. They even ate the BBA. The difference in a week is insane. The little pests that i had been killing are saving my plants.

Now the questions. The crypt looks very good, and some of the sagitarius too. The cabomba looks bad and the sword even worse. Should I hope for another snail miracle, or cut my loses and remove the remaing infected pieces? If I remove, what is a fast growing rooted plant that I can replace them with? Hornwort is one I hear tossed around a lot. And finaly, what went so terribly wrong? I have heard that the tap water here in central Iowa is high in phosphorous, is there a way to check that? I would love to keep plants in my tank, but I am very bad at it so far, so I would really apreciate any advice.

Also, anyone need an army of hardworking snails? I will feel bad removing them after they did so much for me, but I fear they will continue reproducing exponentially (Actually, I know they will. I picked 12 egg cases off the glass today alone.) and will attack the plants when the algae is gone.

Ok, so adding some CO2 would help a lot. For liquid CO2, does it have to be Excel? I have an off brand liquid carbonator, and it makes little bubbles form all over everything when I put it in. Also, is there a phosphorous test kit available? I am considering a RO filter for my water given the phosphate levels I hear about. Besides that, I would love suggestions for fast growing plants that I could handle to make such an outbreak unlikely to occour again.

Oh, and thanks for all the help.

So to update this story in case anyone is wondering, I cleaned out the snail infestation. I estimate over 500 came out of the tank, with 3 species present. It could be a poor estimate, but it took several attempts on consecutive days totaling over 2.5 hours of constant removal by hand, after netting 50 that were just floating in clumps on the surface. The bottom of my 5 gallon bucket looked like I had taken two heaping handfuls of dark gravel and tossed them in. Insanity. I have taken the liberty of fertilizing again, although more conservatively. Also, DIY CO2 efforts have restarted, this time using the non-jello method, with far better results, and I am still using a liquid carbonater as well. And as advised, I picked up a few bunches of water sprite, which worked out well since I needed a tall plant. Thanks for all the help and advice, hopefully this works out better. I may post pics of the algae and ensuing snails later if I can figure out how to do it here.