Just changed over to sand substrate
 

I finally bit the bullet and bought 100 lbs of play sand from lowes for $6. I would have rather used pool filter sand but around here this time of year good luck finding it. The play sand just took more rinsing to get rid of the dirt and really fine sand that would cause clouding problems. The play sand also has larger chunks of quartz in it that look really nice where pool filter sand is generally a bit larger and more uniform. The results are great and I would never go back to gravel. I will be planting the tank heavily with large lowlight plants this week. Here is a bad photo:

http://i470.photobucket.com/albums/r...a/DSC00997.jpg

nice nice!!:thumbsup:

I like it a lot!

I can't wait until you get the rest of your plants :)

Looks nice. I noticed your sand bed looks pretty thick though. How deep is it? You may want to take a bit out so you don't have problems with anaerobic gas pockets.

Its a little deeper than planned, 3ish inches maybe a bit more, wanted to make sure the plants stay put. Also I am planning to setup my 10 gallon tank again as a shrimp tank and was going to use the cycled sand out of this tank (plus some sponges I have stashed in the filter) so I kind of overfilled. I was thinking about getting some snails that will dig in the sand or just poke at the sand with a hair pick when doing maintenance.

Malaysian Trumpet Snails will help aerate your sand bed, I still need to find some of those guys somewhere near me.

Here it is all done:

http://i470.photobucket.com/albums/r...a/DSC01004.jpg

Even better than before. Good job.

If your background is reversible with a plain black/blue on the other side, it would really let your plants stand out.