just remember there is different hydrometers. ie beer, wine, spirits. you want a wine one or any thats got the biggest range on the scale. eg mine goes from 0.80-1.150.
62f is going to go a little slow. i have one batch of mead with EC1118 at around that temp and its crawling. not a bad thing taste wise but it will take a few weeks to brew.
i don't know about fruit. i haven't done much with fruit. seeing as its already in i would leave it till ferment is finished. i figure you might as well get max taste out of it.
Thats what I thought about the fruit. I am just a little worried about it rotting or molding, but I guess the yeast and alc would take care of that. I don't mind waiting a few weeks for a ferment. I just don't want to have all my kit tied up for months. I would rather it take a little longer to ferment and have decent flavor so I don't have to let it age for years. This is why I went with the wine yeast over the turbo yeast.
And if you are adding spices I use a cheese cloth bag that way it can steep but I don't have to worry about straining it out of my wine mead soda whatever plus if you place a sanitized glass shooter marble in the bag it will sit in the mead and not float on top so there is no need to keep pushing it back down
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