Feeling Lost

[bbftb87]

Having kept mixed Mbuna in large unplanted tanks before I'm finding setting up my first planted tank has it's own set of issues and a very different set of considerations.

I don't really like the aesthetic of aqua soil and would like to have a nice natural sand at the bottom of my tank. The question is, what (if anything) should I put underneath?

Aquasoil? Compost? Aquasoil in mesh bags, or compost in mesh bags? Sand in foreground only with aquasoil covering the rest?

For aquasoil Tropica seems best for the budget and for compost John Innes no3 seems well recommended.

I like the idea of the mesh bag approach since it's easy to both add height and separate the substrate. Then I see people recommending crushed lava rock or gravel in the bags with aquasoil on top then finally capped by sand.

The more I read, the more indecisive I seem to become 🙃 I don't want to overcomplicate it all but as much as trial and error is great I'd like to get the initial set up done right and save myself a headache down the road once plants and fish have been added if possible.

So what would you recommend and why? What have you tried, and how did it work out? Pro tips welcome for someone who is admittedly prone to overthinking things 😄

If it helps the tank will be low tech (at least initially), I have TNC complete for water column ferts (since I saw numerous recommendations on here for it as an all in one) and a bag of 100 root tabs if needed.

Look forward to your input 😊

 

[tam]

Planted tank is a pretty wide description... do you have any more ideas of what sort of look you are aiming for? The variety of options is partly because different scapes lend themselves towards different solutions. If you thinking a lot of rocks with planting behind you'll often see the rocks used a divider for the substrate so planting soil at the back behind the rocks where you won't see it and sand at the front. If you want a carpet plant across the front, you probably want some sort of soil under your sand to help with the growth.

Tropica Plant Substrate (not soil) is designed to be used under sand/fine gravel which is another option you could consider.

 

[bbftb87]

I'm not sure yet. I appreciate the 'clinical' look more, though I must admit the heavily planted jungles are growing on me the more I see them 😂

I'd love to have something like the attached one day.

 

[bbftb87]

What I currently have is some rocks plonked in sand

 

[bbftb87]

Don't want to get too bogged down with plant selection / long term plans at the moment since I'm very new to it all and I know I'll have a long journey ahead of me, learning lots of things along the way. More a case of just getting the fundamentals right at this stage and I figure it's best to start from the ground up (literally, if you'll excuse the pun)

 

[richardcunliffe]

This type of look is definitely achievable with a foreground of sand and whatever else behind without compromising the look. In that way the sand can just be sand - generally a really thin layer looks nice (unless you plan to keep fish that have different ideas!) and then behind the hardscape you can have (for instance) bags of crushed lava rock underneath aquasoil.
Sloping sand paths are a different game, with a few possible techniques to achieve, varying in the amount of maintenance work you want to create for yourself 😛
You may not want any suggestions here, but have you considered making the big rock point inward rather than our of the tank? And making your path to the back a little more wiggly?
Once you've got some more substrate under the back that's also going to help give your layout a bunch more apparent depth