Soil base (a soil type sold for growing citrus).
Black Lava rock and driftwood. Dennerle deponit and course gravel underneath the wood and rocks and capping the soil around it.
Azalea roots glued in place using superglue and cigarette filters.
Initial planting.
Pond foam background. I forgot to take a photo after I sculpted it (basically by pulling the surface off). It matches the black lava rock remarkably I think.
Background in place with a little gel superglue against the back glass at the top.
Added a small internal filter. Initially I wanted to do without, as this has worked very well with my smaller tank, but the flow immediately perked everything up. I’ll see how it goes long term.
Three weeks in. A lot of crypt melt, and brown algae which seems just to be coming under control. Four Otocinclus seem to be happy (one died not long after being added).
There are also three large Amano shrimps transfered from my smaller tank and three small ones newly added (one of which I’m not sure is still around). I added three orange/yellow cherry shrimps but they died almost immediately. I noticed that the water they arrived in had an unusually high TDS (800) so maybe the transition to the still high (330) Oxfordshire tap water was too much.