Chlorine floater questions

Hi, we are very new to having a pool. We have an Intex 12' x 30" metal frame pool with a 1718 gallon capacity. After a very stressful week of trying to figure out all the chemical aspects of owning a pool and returning products to the store multiple times, we've decided to use 1" trichlor tablets in a floater. Now I know, these are not recommended here. But we'll only have our pool up 3-5 months (probably only 1-2 this year) and several friends who have similar pools locally have said that's what they've used for years and have had no problems. So that's what we're doing now. If it ends up not working, oh well, we'll go a different route.

From what I've been able to find online, it's not recommended to use a floater with the solar blanket on. If this is true, what's the best way to deal with this? The only cover I could find locally was a solar cover. We don't need a solar cover because it actually is almost too warm for it here. We've had temps over 100 for the last week and ended up having to drain the water and refill to cool it down. This was when we were using granules and had the solar blanket on almost all the time. I want to have a cover to help the chlorine stay longer and to keep bugs and junk out. We were thinking maybe have the floater in and cover off in the day, then floater out and cover on at night... does that sound like a feasible plan? If not what other suggestions would you have?

Also from calculations I've seen online, we only need to run the pump 4 hours a day since it's a smaller pool. But I know in general you should run the pump when you put in chemicals. So do you need to run it the whole time the floater is in?

Last, how long does it take for the chlorine in the tablets to show up on a test? It's been 24 hours since I first put them in and FAC is still at 0-1. Does that mean I need to put more tablets in or just wait longer for them to dissolve more?