Ooo burn! :angryfire
I really could care less about fish, to me it is just a bonus.
Honestly I don't approve of keeping any fish in a Mini M or smaller, Oto's or a Beta, but that is about it.
The thing in my opinion about the dry start is that you can balance it however you want.
I did 27 days of dry start, but guess what, I am a busy person and it was very suited to my schedule.
My first iwagumi attempt was characterized by impatience.
I flooded the tank straight away, algae abound, rhizoclonium completely took over, everything dead in a couple days.
So then attempt #2 came around and I was disillusioned from my last failure and even more busy than I am now, I did a dry start for 3 months. Flooded the tank and voila, no algae, no dieback(never actually experienced dieback before, but like I've said I hate wasting Rubisco so I keep my co2 a lot higher than most people do) and yea, it was kind of boring.
The main drawback is that I had looked at the tank dry for 3 months, now with nothing left to do but trim there was no value in the aquascape for me anymore, I tore it down a month later.
I will never reach a state of zen with water changes.
I tolerate them, they are easy on the Mini-M... I can put my knee on a chair and rest a half full 5 gallon bucket on my knee and siphon the water into the tank, done, no big deal.
I don't like it though, I just know it is a good and healthy part of aquarium keeping.
I couldn't stand doing them every day though.
To me "it's not an issue of can I do water changes every day, but rather should I?"
The final reasoning for my drystart is that I always ruin the slope of my Iwagumi when planting the HC, even if I plant it dry I ruin the slope.
So my solution is to just sprinkle HC cuttings on the aquasoil and keep the humidy at 100 percent to prevent transpiration which would prevent the sprinkling method from working successfully.
(I got the idea one day while doing tomato grafts, after which I was to keep the humidty in the sealed container at 100 percent and maintain a temperature of 82f)
By sprinkling the HC the slope stayed exactly as I wanted it.
I do love trimming, I love cleaning my lily-pipes, I love dosing, I love replanting stems... I just don't love water changes. That is just me though.