The Set-Up

After some advice from members of the New England Aquatic Plant Society, I cut off a piece of the front left leg in order to tilt the driftwood forward. It was a small change, but it gives the piece a dynamic sense of movement. Thank you to NEAPS!

Here's the tank right before planting.

The equipment is all set-up. In the picture, from left to right, you can see the glass check valve, bubble counter and diffuser.

Here I've added Bacter 100, Super Clear and Tourmaline. The directions in English are contradictory. In one set of instructions, ADA tells you to put the additives on the bare bottom of the tank. In another set of instructions, they tell you to put it on top of the Power Sand. So I split the difference and did both.

Here I've added one 2 liter bag of Power Sand and some more Bacter 100, Super Clear and Tourmaline.

Here I am setting the dirftwood.

I added roughly 1/3 of a 9 liter bag of Amazonia.

Another angle. The driftwood is pushed as far back and to the right as possible.

Side angle. The substrate has been graded about 8 cm in the back to 4 cm in the front.

Here's the end result. I wish I had taken more pictures of the planting process, but I was too excited. I went to two LFS and they actually didn't have a great selection. I bought want I could, but wanted probably twice as much plant material. I'm not keen on the rotala (?) in the back left corner, but I felt that I needed some stem plants to help during the cycling of the tank. I think I will pull these out when the tank is stabalized.

The anubias on the bottom left is not set yet. The LFS did not have any small rocks for me to tie the anubias to. I'm not sure where I will place this piece of anubias. I definitely need more foreground material, but the LFS only had two pots of this Hemianthus callithictroides (at least that is what I think it is). The plant in the back right is a type of Microsorium (I think). I will need my friends from NEAPS to help me identify this stuff. In general, I think this tank needs a little more separation between the foreground and midground, but I'm not sure what to do yet. And there's also the issue of the back left corner and what to do with it. I'd like to use some hair grass, but I can't visualize if it would look good. I also need to re-grade the substrate.

View from the top.

View from the side.

View from the left side.

Ta-da! Not bad for a first timer, but there's definitely ALOT of room for improvement.