These are incredible. I've always preferred this to castles and mini scuba divers over neon sand haha. How much work goes into this though? With all the leaf litter, plus the eventual dead leaves from the live plants, are you constantly tending to them to prevent too much composting on the bottom?
Thanks.
Actually believe it or not these are some of the lowest maintenance tanks I've had.
I never clean the substrate where I have plants and leaf litter.
I let all the leaf litter rot away and replace when required. Dead leaves hold no protein or sugars that produce nasties as they decompose.
Any fish waste I regard as plant food.
I do large scale weekly water changes and regular cleaning of my canisters.
This approach I feel works in set ups with live plants and fish of small to medium sizes.
I don't think this would work in an un planted set up with large messy cichlids for example.
I'm really enjoying this less sterile approach to fish keeping and in my situation have experienced no negative effects on water chemistry.
Thanks again for the nice comments.
