It's not much...

[NetBelleAnie]

...but it's something.  Mom broke my previous 55 tank right before I set it up, so bought a new 55 tank.

Added a bunch of old black sand and dry Eco-Complete from when I had it set up 5 years ago, added 2 bags of Seachem Onyx sand (then proceeded to remove it all and thoroughly wash all the gravel since the sand was very chalky and no amount of vacuuming would fix it.  After everything was clean, threw the gravel back in the tank, added 2 bags of fresh Eco-Complete and mixed them together.  Added water, added some plants and threw on the Aquaclear 70 HOB, along with 2 sponge filters so they can be cycled.

Plants include: 1 microsword, 1 dwarf chain sword, 1 cryptocoryne lucens, 4 cryptocoryne parva, 2 vallisneria, 1 amazon sword, a baseball sized clump of guppy grass, 1 narrow java fern badly glued to a coconut shell, some amazon frogbit and a tiny amount of duckweed I got by mistake.

Only resident is a tiny bladder snail that doesn't care about the 2ppm Ammonia and Fritzzyme cycling process going on for the last 5 days.

 

I want to do some better aquascaping, making a raised tier in the back but I'm still working on that.  Any suggestions for how to do that, please let me know.

[Isaac M]

Hi @NetBelleAnie, for the raised tier do you mean like sloping the substrate a lot higher? If that is what you mean, a lot of people will put small lava rocks in bags and then pour the substrate over them to add height to the substrate at the back of the aquarium. 

Please let me know if I misunderstood. Thank you for sharing! 

[NetBelleAnie]

Nope, that's exactly what I ment,  Right now everything is planted temporarily since I'm still debating what goes where, and ignoring the fact my fluval 406 and spraybar arn't connected yet, replacing the hosing still.

[Isaac M]

Oh ok well perfect! You can simply fill mesh bags or something similar with cheap pieces of lava rock and stick it in the back of the aquarium. Then you can cover it with your substrate. That is a cheap way to add height to your substrate. 

As far as aquascaping goes, unless you are doing a dutch aquascape, your hardscape is the foundation to your aquascape. I would recommend getting a really nice piece of driftwood that you like and some rocks to compliment it, and add it to your aquarium. Given all you have is a snail, you can move things around until you like the way it looks. Then you can plant your plants around that. Just a thought.