DAY TWO
It's 9.30 and I've just done my first-ever water change. Piece of cake, thanks to London Dragon's simple water change system - thanks LD. The water already had a distinctly greenish tinge, although it wasn't murky, as the Oliver Knott fill-up had worked a treat. I used bubble-wrap instead of polythene sheet, and it floated gently to the top making it dead easy to lift out without chucking water everywhere. I misjudged the water temp going in to the tank just now, and lost 4 degrees C - I'm sure I'll get better at this, but if I had had livestock in there, would they have suffered?
Co2 is getting bashed in - the drop checker (JBL - Clive's idea - ugly, but easy to read, thanks Clive) was still green this morning before the water change.
I only had four floaters when I did the first fill, which I thought was pretty good. After a few attempts at replanting I gave up and chucked them. As I've gone for very heavy planting (thanks Mr Starkey and others) it shouldn't matter. There's a definite knack to planting with tweezers - with HC I soon realised I had to squeeze excess moisture out of the rockwool plug, then crimp the tweezer tips around it to make a compact missile that could be plunged into the substrate. There's a fair bit of rockwool showing on my first HC plugs, but I'm sure it'll disappear underneath the carpet.
Hydrocotyle was a bugger to separate from the rockwool - it looks like it's grown from seed, as there's no split in the wool to help extract the plant. I ended up wasting a fair bit, and what I did plant didn't seem to have much of a root structure. Still it'll be getting all the nutrients, Co2 and light it needs - I'm sure some will survive.
EI - I'm dosing manually as I haven't got the digital timer for the dosing pump yet. I'm not sure what daily water changes will do to EI, but I reckon I'm OK so long as I add a fresh daily dose after the water change but before the lights go on.
I'm also adding Nitrivec, as I've no mature media to kickstart my bacterial colony. I'm a bit dubious about bacteria in a bottle, but it's worth a try.