Finally, pictures!
This shows the whole setup together. The color of the wood is much more true in these pictures. It's a beautiful red mahogany stain on oak. I love the rich red color!
You can see the box for my Rena XP4 that I just installed! I still have a few things out of place as I work on getting the CO2, lights and other hardware matters taken care of.
So far, the CO2 is running well (just a few bubbles coming out). I'm using my TEK fixture with only two bulbs running (makes it 1.44wpg which is still pretty low/med lighting). And my ferts should be arriving today or maybe tomorrow.
If you look at the bottom right corner, you'll see my mess of electrical cords. This is why I really need to do something about this. At first, I had the power strips further away which seemed okay, but as I added more stuff, not only did I fill up the power strips, but the cords were too short to allow me to keep them far enough away to make them safe. I even have one power strip on the floor! Bad idea. Hopefully, with Biscuit's help, this can be made much more safe.
Ah, the "drag and drop" method of aquascaping! Yes, this is a total mess. There is absolutely no scaping done at all. Looking closely, you'll see plants still in their pots, one is turned over sideways, one plant is floating upside down, lots of stems floating wherever, with leaves caught in my filter strainer! I created a holding container for my riccia so it wouldn't overtake my entire tank (that's the big square thing floating on the left side).
Caves of all sorts are strewn about. I hadn't planned to get my pelvicachromis (kribs) when I did so I didn't have time to make nice caves for them. Instead, I took everything I had on hand that could be considered a cave and dropped it all in. So there are some lace rock caves, some caves made by placing plants tied to holy rocks together, some plain clay pots and lots of pvc pipes. Not very pretty, but they serve the function intended.
And a close up of the tank itself. What a mess!
Trying to switch from low tech to high tech is a bit of a challenge so I've trying to get a number of plants that can handle both environments, mainly java ferns and anubias. Plus, I want them to serve as basic green low maintenance plants that will then let the more high maintenance, more colorful stems take front stage. Being a regular gardener, I guess these are the shrubs, and the stems will be the centerpiece plants. At least that's the idea.
I have some more pictures to post a little later. They're more of the fish themselves. I'm not a great photographer and I have a very old camera, but I did my best. So more pictures coming soon!