I suppose you've followed that very lengthy thread on BBA (I've not read it since it passed several pages) ...
I've observed outstanding BBA in tanks that have very low light & (apparantly) low waste levels (fortunately not my tanks) & essentially "no" BBA in peat filtered tanks (considerable brown staining of water column), so I don't think it's as simple as just reducing/removing the peat.
Assuming that you need the peat for lowered pH, you might look at alternate sources of peat, also try some purigen or charcoal (better at DOC removal but more $$ as it can't be (easily) regenerated - Amano used "bamboo charcoal" which was likely the most economic available) ie play at offsetting the current "balance" in the tank ...
though, again, I think BBA responds better to more aggressive methods such as Seachem's Excel and mechanical interference:
- local shop keeps a horde of hungry juvenile "SAE" for just this purpose - affected plants that ship in, go straight to the SAE tank to get "cleaned"; any signs of BBA in the display tanks & SAE go in (
and no fish food for 2-3 days)
- amano shrimp will eat BBA (in the early stages) but it's rather low on the palatability list so this really only works if no other food is present (red-nose shrimp are reported to be more fond of it, though again I believe this was in the context of "young" BBA))
- removal of all affected leaves + shrimp/SAE etc
It's quite likely that old substrate released considerable waste into the water column - how well was it rinsed? did you do daily water changes for the first week or two?
I'm a lazy aquarist & I've done a lot of things to my tanks that are virtually guaranteed to produce volumes of assorted algaes (including BBA) but I don't have much algae (but I obviousy also don't have any super charged light/CO2/fast growth tanks either) - not saying I'm great at planted tanks (I'm a terrible aquascaper by the standards of this forum
), just that it's not as straightforward a relationship as some claim.
In your situation, I'd
1) daily water changes, even if it's just 20 % focused on debris vacuuming of substrate & plants
2) filter media - fine wool to trap debris, charcoal/purigen (but only add the latter after a week of daily water changes unless it's convenient to check/recharge/remove the media every couple of days), if you can track down one of those old DE filters (such as the System one) run that
(I think adding in UV took over as it's far less labour & technically easier (charging the DE filter takes practise))
3) mechanical removal/spot treatment with Excel - how feasible is it to remove plants for treatment ... or move fish to temporary tanks while aggressively battling the algae
4) add CO2 - even at 5mg/l it will make a difference, just leave this on 24/7, you can always increase surface ripple at night
5) more light? - not sure how low your low light is