As long as you choose plants that do well under low/moderate light, there's no reason why a non-co2 tank can't work. People who can't keep a non-co2 tank or think it's impossible, lack either the patience or knowledge required and shouldn't be taken all that seriously.

Your big issue here is your plants are in a crippled state to start off with. This will take a lot of patience, pruning, work etc. to overcome. Stick with it and you'll get there.

Well after doing more rereading I'm pretty positive I have Rhizoclonium algae. I was thinking it was some kind of GBA but its deff not. I have a couple small spots of BBA which came from my 10G plants, and a slight green thread in my moss.

I am now dosing Excel, I know it works on BBA as in the 10G it has already turned red, it also may work on staghorn as I believe that its turning white.

I've read that Excel "should" help with this Rhizoclonium algae, so I hope so. So far I started with 2x the daily dose, so 10ml for 55G(prob 50G of water). I did ~3x on the 2nd day just to kick start. From now on I'm doing 2x daily in a syringe for spot treatment w/ the filter off for 15min. I believe this should work(fingers crossed). I am thinking that since I'm a newb and had only 1 fish in the tank, I did not dose enough nitrate and I had high ammonia to start so this is the cause. I also tested my tap for phosphate and have 1.0 according to API test kit(I know it may not be accurate). Also I do notice slight algae that is similar or GBA on one of the same plants that I bought that I put into my 10G, so it is possible that this is the source and I just gave it optimal conditions to thrive?

I can tell you that the Rotala is doing much better. It seemed to be doing the worst at 1st. It is starting to straighten out and has some new branches/growth.

The plants that have been doing OK through all of this have been the Nymphoides sp. 'Taiwan' and Cabomba.

As of now I have raised the fixture up ~3" and it is on for 6hrs a day. If it doesn't seem much better here in 2weeks of using the Excel I may do a blackout as long as the plants are looking strong enough to live through it.