My 40G planted tank

I am almost ready to go. As you can see I have mixed my substrate and put it in the tank. The dark is my soil based, and the light is the regular.

I have set up my hard scape, and wanted to get all of your opinions on how it looks. I am going for a mound style aquarium. I would like the background to be barely visible when plants grow in.

Of course I will probably play with over the next couple days and shift things around. I also need to wash some more sand and fill in between the rocks a little. Just thought I would see what you all think

 

Broken pavement? I am going to plant a bunch of anubias in the cracks between rocks. It will look a lot different with plants growing in amongst the rocks.

Thanks for all the comments

 

Wow lots of questions I am glad to see that someone is interested.

The dark part of the substrate is a mixture of earthworm castings, top soil, flourite, and pool filter sand. I then covered it in a mixture of pool filter sand and black sand for color.

For filtration I am using a classic Ehiem canister filter. I think I am going to get another Ehiem classic and a power head.

The tank is not full yet. I am growing out Glosso and giving the bacteria in the substrate a chance to get use to being submerged so there is only about 2 inches of water in the tank.

Lighting is 3.9 watts per gallon with nova extreme t5 lighting.

Here is a list of plants I am thinking of using, these might change:

Back ground: limnophila sessiliflora, rotala rotundifolia, HM (pearlweed).

Midground crypt walkerii, crypt undulatus, crypt becketti, blyxia japanica, and anubias on the rocks. I might also try to get some HC to grow in some sand on top of the rocks.

Foreground is going to be mostly glosso, but I might also add Marsilea quadrifolia or pull up the glosso and use only the Marsilea quadrifolia. I will see how it looks when the glosso grows in.

I hope that answered your questions. Thanks for your interest.

 

My glosso is really growing well and I think I will be ready to add more plants in a week or two. I will post update pictures this week.

For those of you that are wondering what going into the tank, here is a list of fish I am thinking of. Some of these fish I have not tried together so if any one sees any possible conflicts please let me know.

lots of cardinal tetras
Red tailed sharks
a couple of loaches for plant snail control
oto catfish
some kind of dwarf pleco (probably albino long fin. I've had these before and really like them)
If I can find some zebra nerite snails (they wil have to big so the loaches don't eat them)
german blue rams
SAEs

 

Plants are ordered and should be in around Wednesday

 

Here is the tank after the first planting. Some of the plants that are in the tank will be moved shortly to other tanks. That is why they are still in the baskets. I have 2 more plant orders coming in. Some of the background plants are in there but it will be a few weeks before they grow taller than the rocks.

This is only the first planting. There are going to be a lot of changes once things grow in a little.

Yes that is brown algae in the front of the tank. I think it will all go away after the glosso finishes spreading out. FYI the glosso is growing like crazy.

It's not a very good picture due to the fact that my batteries could die at any second. I'll take a bunch more pictures when I get new batteries