Well.
This felt like it went disastrously, but now I've had some tea I'm upgrading to disappointing and a bit frustrating.
Warts & all journal and all that.
Plant order arrived today so have had a bit of a play. Pulled the plants out that weren't on the wood, trimmed off the algae encrusted bits and prepped them to go back in (I ditched all the hairgrass, it was too far gone), then prepared the new ones, which all seemed in good nick apart from the Blyxa (lots of yellow leaves, only split-able into 3 portions) which was a bit disappointing as that was the plant I was most excited for!
Here they are ready to plant back in (minus the Bucephalandra Red & Kedagang which had already been attached to rock/wood:
And here's what pulling everything put of the tank had done
This is where the problems set in, one self inflicted, one not.
Self inflicted problem - I didn't net out the fish so only drained out ~80% of the water. Given how much gunk was floating around this made , among other things, putting the rocks back in in an aesthetically pleasing fashion quite challenging. I also have no idea what the crypts look like planted either...hopefully my blind guessing stabs with tweezers into the murk pay off!
Un-self inflicted problem. Turns out 3ish year old aquasoil is mush. So unless it's very deep nothing stays planted, and the slightest prod sprays even more gunk/powder everywhere. This combined with stressed out fish in the foreground shallows uprooting anything that did stay down did not combine to make the planting experience the relaxing zen time it is advertised to be!
After much swearing, chuntering and slopping water on the floor this is what I've ended up with:
It will hopefully look better in the morning...
(After this photo was taken a bit of hydrocotyle tripartita lifted and took a load of staurogyne repens with it
)