to improve lag youi could lower the limit to 75-100 BUT add b.mc.ecocitycraft for the new players to go on it would be the same thing as mc.ecocitycraft.com so you can hold the same amount of players and eliminate lag.
not only that but, Why would we have a separate server for new players? this would cause more lag, even if we lower player limit, there would still be two maps being loaded, and this would just cause problems.
The player limit lowering doesn't seem to be helping, the server is restarting every 2 hours which is all it needs. This would also mean new players wouldn't be able to find ecc on sties such as minestats.