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My primary display tank for the past few years has been a Spec 16 gallon. I tried a lot of different plants and livestock in this tank until it kind of turned into a controlled chaos jungle that was nearly impossible to maintain without disturbing everything. So I finally just decided to do a full reset. The plants and livestock were moved to my other tanks and projects. The following details the steps and what I plan to do this time around. Nothing ground breaking here but I have some ideas that I'm hoping work well together. First plans for stocking once complete. The original setup had nano fish like Ember Tetras and White cloud minnows and Cherry Shrimp. Once they became establish the Cherry Shrimp colony exploded to the point I was selling them, moving them to other tanks and giving them away. As I increased the stock of fish in the tank and added some species that were more prone to snacking on baby shrimp their population declined. I always still had a few that kept producing but I would have to look for them to find them. I really miss having shrimp everywhere so I want to focus getting a big colony going again so... - Neo Caridina shrimp (any color love them all) - Amano Shrimp or Rudolph shrimp - Green Kubotai Rasbora - Hummingbird Tetra - Bladder snails (I have a pea puffer tank) Plants. I learned by trial error in the previous setup what plants worked in my water with the stock light on this tank. Some things grew so well they were almost annoying and tried to take over the tank and other things struggled to even get started. Also some things were just so much simpler to maintain once established - Background - Crypt Nurii (crypts grow tall for me in this setup rather than staying low and bushy) - Midground - Hygrophila corombosa compacta - Foreground - Crypt Parva and Schismatoglottis Prietoi (we need a nickname for that 2nd one) Substrates I have had good luck using stratum so that will be the base for most of the tank areas that will be planted. However if you cap it with anything it tends to work its way to the top over time as it is very light and fluffy easy to disturb. To reduce that this time I plan to put a piece of plastic screen mesh over the stratum before adding the cap material. This will help to keep the substrates from mixing but will still allow roots to grow through. The primary substrate on display will be #2 chicken grit...which is crushed quartzite sold at farm supply stores. I bought a 20lb bag for $8 and its a brownish red dark color when wet. That was a wall of text. If you read that...thanks? lol now for some photos of progress. Im sort of frugal so I always try to use or reuse items I already have around. One of those things I had was sheets of rockwool squares from a plant project. I decided they would make a good light weight way to add vertical structure to the setup. Im using various chunks of Seiryu stone and some staight pieces of wood for structure and to create barriers for substrate. This is the end of the tank I see from my living room chair Im no aquascaping expert but Im making an attempt at the rule of thirds and doing a triangular layout from both viewing angles Here ive put a barrier of the gravel near the glass with stratum behind it and then started adding the screen I ran out of stratum but this will be repeated for each layer. Remaining substrate in place Plants in 4 pots of Parva 2 Bunches of Hygrophila 1 Cup of Schismatoglottis 2 Cups Crypt nurii Filled the tank until plants were just submerged. Going to run it half filled to let the plants get started and get the cycle going. For those unfamiliar with the Flex tanks they have a sort of janky 3 chamber built in filtration area. This normally is meant to be operated with a submerged pump in the third chamber that pulls water through all the chambers and then returns it to the tank. I prefer to have air in all my tanks so I figured I might as well move water through this area with an easy flow kit instead and reduce the number of things I need plugged in to operate the tank. The normal weighted bases I had available wouldn't fit in the 3rd chamber so I added a plant weight to this section of cage. Also the hole that would normally have the return nozzle to the tank is larger than the angled section of the easy flow kit. I'm going to have small nano fish and shrimp that I would prefer to keep out of the filtration so I reversed an extra section of easy flow tubing to fill the gap. I filled most of the first chamber with coarse filter pad cut to fit. The 2nd chamber has a lower section with a curved divider that makes it difficult to put filter pads and media bags in so I filled that with plastic dish scrubbers. On top of that I added a filter bag of crushed coral for buffer and a filter bag of ceramic media. I filled the top of the 2nd chamber with more coarse sponge pads. Hard to get a decent picture between the glare and placement of the tank which doesn't let me get around the filter end easily. So i now have A overly complicated sponge filter adding oxygenation and providing water movement for the filter chamber and tank. 3rd chamber also has a heater and I added a piece of filter floss sheet in front of the final baffle to catch fines that get by everything else. Regular maintenance will simply be pulling the filter floss and rinsing or replacing. Coarse sponge will be pulled for cleaning as needed. This leaves only the CO2 diffuser in the tank. I'm not pumping a ton of CO2 its just there as a supplement. Once the plants are established I'm thinking I can feed it into the 3rd chamber as well. Curious people thoughts regarding this.

Hey y’all, So I finally set my 75 gallon up. However, I only did so after working three nights in a row when I had expected at least a day off, so I wasn’t super clear in my thinking. Having heard that grape leaves are high iron and therefore beneficial to crypts in particular I decided to add a layer of them to my substrate. I did not have a clear direction in how I wanted to plant the tank, so I just spread them across the entire bottom. My chief question is whether anyone else out there has any experience using grape leaves, not dried but from a grocery store, in their substrate? And second, what does everyone think will happen? I had a moment when I was about half finished planting, that maybe it wasn’t wise to have a layer of decaying plant matter sitting between my aqua soil in media bags and my upper gravel layer. Should I just rip them out now or ride it out and find out what happens? Thanks!

I was going to get started on doing my crystal red shrimp tank but I wanted to know if fluval stratum leaches out ammonia. Also, what is your experience with the substrate overall? Does it really change the ph and what are your tips for using it?

Hey, I'm seeing a lot of people on forums saying that stratum will "buffer" ph down to the low 6's. Is this true no matter the water you start with? I have a well established 29-gallon with flourite substrate that has always tested out to 7.2-7.6 ph. I'm setting up a 2nd tank (20g) to grow out a female apisto or two. I'm curious if, when the time comes to move my male, will I be moving him into a dramatically different environment? I'm not really versed on what "buffer" means exactly, but I would think the two tanks shouldn't be too much of a difference because I'm using the same tap water? Or will the substrate heavily dictate the ph?