Ask the person who adviced it to clarify his idea, what is the theory and alledged benefit behind it?
Since i think i am the one that Cor is referring too i step out of the dark with a try to clarify.
Having said that i'd first of all like to add that i just stated that i do it like that with aquasoil, everybody should do it the way they like best.
Honestly: i don't want to suggest that i reinvented the wheel at all, at most i made a rather shaggy, slow and bumpy rolling wheel for my own crappy wheelbarrel
But i have a few reasons to do what i do so here i go:
-It's a sure way to avoid any algae blooming during the ammonia spike period of the cycling soil.
I don't think the newly placed and still adapting plants are going to profit that much of the ammonia spike just because they are still settling in. Sometimes the majority of plants used are new and still in emerse state. So they will have little grow at first because they are busy adjusting to the life under water.
Algae will be the first to profit from this spike since they are the first to feel setted in.
So giving them no light is simply giving them no chance to bloom during these weeks filled with fluctuations and waterchanges. I prefer avoiding them in this stage over having to battle them from the word go.
After these weeks you start to get some sort of a balance in the tank and you have more grip on the parameters because the WC has come to a normal rhytm... The filter is starting to work and the soil is getting stable...
So i presume that this level of balance provides a better starting situation for the plants. And I know: they can take a lot, for sure, but they do like things to be stable too i think...Some melting will occur because of transit to submerse state but sometimes plants tend to melt because of other instabilities so i try to minimize those...
Anyway i have to add that i avoid using only new plants in a new setup, i start with max 40% newly bought (emerse) plants and add more plants from other tanks at the start. Just to avoid too much debree from melting plants/leaves and to avoid too much buildup of un-used nutrients.
Actually i buy some of the new plants on beforehand and i tend to keep them in a well cycled and stable tank for a few weeks to get them adjusted more or less. That is actually the main idea behind it: avoid having a cycling tank filled with cycling plants...
-I believe that the plants (especially newly bought plants) have a pretty hard time anyway when placed in to a new system so i like to make their start as easy as possible. Knowing that the AS leaks a lot of elements in the water during the first weeks makes me think that this is not the easiest of start to begin with. It's also not so easy (and a bit of a waste) to dose nutrients and provide a stable environment for the plants if you are changing 80% of the water every day or every other day. Co2 can be injected but you have to time the waterchanges more or less to make sure you don't cause to many fluctuations in de gas-levels, so i find it easier to start dosing co2 after the WC period...
-I really don't think you should skip the WC by the way! It's just because those WC are necessary that i start without the lights on... I find it much easier to do those big WC's without having to care about plants loosing their (newly) grip on the substrate.
-I do the WC's with tap water and start with RO water at the and of week 3. That way i don't spill too much RO water and avoid any plants suffering from the suddenly changed waterparameters because of the RO. My tapwater is very hard so that makes adequate co2 dosing much harder in pure tap water.
-I have to admit that i use this period without plants also to evaluate the hardscape. I know from before that i tend to feel the urge to make adjustments the first weeks so before every WC i have a good look and think about the scape as a whole to spot the weaknesses and find the right adjustment.
That way i can easily make adjustments because there are no plants in the way... And, since i was planting a rather large carpet of HC I decided that planting the small plantlets was going to be more effective and easier when the heavy WC shedule was over...
So i see some advantages in it and applied this method a few times and because i had no algae or diatomes during the startup i tend to do it like that.
Needless to say: i have a lot of patience and prefer the slow appraoch so i don't mind this approach. Some people are in an endless hurry so they should not even consider this.
But again: i really don't claim to have invented a new way of algae-free cycling or anything like that. I merely found a way that suits me...
I even have to add that i didn't invented this but based it on some advice from a fellow plant-enthousiast so even if it were a revolutionary idea i couldn't claim it after all...