agitate surface 24/7, you dont need to create waves, just a nice ripple, co2 loss is not much, and co2 is cheap as hell anyway. It gives your fish a rest during the night, and at night plants release co2 anyway. this will allow you to increase your co2 during the day considerably, for me its about double. so long as your fish are happy, theres no such thing as too much co2.

forget your test kits, measuring for any of those things is pretty hit and miss unles youve calibrated them and even then, well.. its hit and miss. the beauty of EI is that you dont need to measure, because your adding what you KNOW your plants are going to need.. when things are running nicely, adding more than you need isnt an issue either.. so testing becomes redundent.