Cigar Thoughts: Floating plants blocking surface exchange = more co2 build up?

[snowballs99]

So I was smoking some nicotine and had a thought.

I always wondered why my non co2 tanks with a bit of dirt did much better with surface floaters.

Soil builds up co2 at night due to decomposition. Normally this is degassed. But if you have a ton of floating plants + fish, the co2 build up is much more intense since co2 has less area to escape.

This causes all plants below to grow better since the co2 ppm on average is higher, esp with respiration from fish load etc.

Floating plants are also extremely good at pulling nutrients out the water, so it essentially keeps the water column lean against algae, and let root feeders dig deeper.


Second question:
Do plants that struggle to get nutrients in water column put more energy into root zone formation?

I noticed in my exhausted aquasoil tank, some of my buces would grow nearly 0 new leaves, but the root growth was insane.
Later on I found out my soil + water column just didn't have any nutrients left.

Once I dosed water column nutrients the plants seem focused much less on roots and more on foliage.