can't seem to get this Amazon biotope looking right :(

[pandamonium]

Hey everyone,

So I set up an Amazon biotope tank which later turned into a Amazon fish tank with various plants. The problem is I am having a lot of trouble creating an aquascape that works well and looks nice.
Inhabitants of the tank are 6 GBRs, 18 cardinal tetras, 8 dwarf purple pencilfish, 8 lemon tetras. You can see what the tank looks like now in my tank signature. Just fast forward to post #30.
I got a whole ton of plants from a local RAOK in and now I am having trouble incorporating them in.
The plants in the tank and the plants from the RAOK are
Alternanthera rosefolia
Myrio mattogrossense
Sunset Hygro
Brazilian Pennywort
Staurogyne repens
Blyxa
1 node of E. belem
Rotala Vietnam
Hydrocotyle japan (how do I plant this btw?)
Ludwigia sp. (RAOK-er claims its ludwigia red but I think its a different ludwigia species)
Echinodorus Parviflorus.

I numbered the plants I have in my drawing. Driftwood is brown and green are the intake and outtake tubes.

1- Pennywort
2- Ludwigia
3- Myrio
4- Alternanthera rosefolia
5- Sunset hygro
6- staurogyne repens
7- blyxa
8- e parviflorus
9- rotala vietnam

Any help with how to arrange this would be very helpful. please check my tank journal to see a pic of how my tank looks

[Jules]

So it this what it looks like right now?

IMHE I think biotope tanks look best with only one or two species of plant - if you look at a pic of a typical underwater amazon scene you see few if any plants and typically no more than one species per location.

It's very difficult to incorporate a large number of different plant species into a tank and still have things come out looking harmonious and natural - if you want to go the multiple species look, maybe aiming for a dutch style tank would work better, since the "streets" of plants bring their own harmony to those tanks.

[pandamonium]

Yes the tank looks somewhat like that. Maybe I will take a look at how to create a Dutch style of tank I have heard about it before but would like to get it going right. Thanks for the input