Urbanaquatics

Ive used a rubber liner (home depot sells rolls of it) over the shelves before, but I wouldnt recommend it. You will be better off getting some plywood to replace them with, Home Depot will cut it to size for you, thats what I did. The material the shelves come with are terrible and if they get wet they will lose strength quickly, you could get away with it, but I found myself always worrying about it so I replaced them. Do it right from the start and you will save a ton of headache later on trying to move set up tanks an replace it down the road. The shelves just take a little time to get right, use a rubber mallet and tap the bars in the center first then work your way around until they are all seated. The weight of the tanks will keep them in place as well, so if they dont want to stay seated they will when the tank is on it. Make sure your rack is level when assembling to make it easier to seat them.

It really depends on what fish you are keeping in the tank. What do you want to stock it with?

You can definitely do that, I would put that piece in the left back corner with enough room between the vertical piece and the side glass to put in a big amazon sword or some vals and crypts retrospiralis for some easy plants that would maintain the view from that side. You have a lot of height with that tank, so a big sword would fit well. Then you can taper your rock work down so its almost like the branch is a tree trunk on the riverbank between the rocks. You could also just keep it as is and add a bunch of bigger/tall growing plants on either side to give it that height you are looking for with the plants instead of trying to rescape it.

That driftwood is amazing, when you put it all back in after it is water logged, I would try moving the driftwood to the left side so the main vertical branch is not in the center of the tank. Have you decided on what you are going to stock this with? I love the idea of a big group of community fish.

Lynze, thats not it, but thank you because looking for those helped me find them. I believe they are serpent loaches, Serpenticobitis octozona.

So I went to my LFS the other day and bought a bunch of new fish. I was sold these as kuhli loaches but I am sure that is wrong. I tried searching through the loach index on loaches.com, but I cannot find anything with the same markings. Anyone know what these are? https://imgur.com/O01ICJ4 https://imgur.com/a/ZXWORHm