Ive decided that being able to carry out bigger, more frequent water changes will be far less hastle in the long run. Having to be more picky about plants and possibly loosing a few due to high KH I think will present me with far less stress.

Ive gone right back to basics after spending a solid 2 days reading the vast amount of info from you guys in various posts, Ive had some algae problems (not huge, but still annoying) since just about day 1. So Ive made sure Ive stabalised CO2, reduced lighting a bit as the water change brightened the water so much I wondered if I was having a problem with suspended algae problems and didnt notice so much. Also did a big scrub out of every bit of rock/wood in the tank, cleaned the glass, hoovered up the substrate, pruned off all the leaves that had brown/black goo all over them. Realised also that I was PO4 starving my plants, so Ive bought some Nourish Phosphate and Im carefully building that back up now too.

Its amazing how wrong you can go when you read some bad info from people that dont really know what theyre doing. Im so glad I found this site and so grateful for all of you guys for putting so much time into it. Already I feel more confident on what Im doing. I hope that one day Ill know enough to be able to contribute more fully.