A couple of years ago I started a planted tank with the intention of having it remind one of a reef tank. It was a disaster and my wife wanted the space for a new sofa and love seat. Fast forward to now. I learned some hard lessons from that failed tank. I have been maintaining a glow fish tank for my wife, a 55 gallon with fake plants. That made me want to start a new planted tank. I started Freshwater Reef 2.0 back in early July with my wife's blessing. This tank has already had some serious algae blooms, a mini cycle because I used peroxide to kill off a bad case of hair algae, and the death of 7 or 8 ghost shrimp that were doing well until that night. Thankfully though so far that is the only major disaster that happened. There was also some good that came of it though. It let me take out, divide, and rearrange most of my plants. Also unlike the last planted tank I did not use tons of soil. In fact some places up front have no soil whatsoever. The sand layer is thick. Glad I have many MTS. Some may frown on this but I have a fat substrate line up front. I want to have the ability to plant plants that have deep roots. I also like the idea of being able to see the area below the substrate. I have hopes of finding at least one freshwater bristleworm for this tank (yes they are a thing) or some actual aquatic (non-leech) earthworms.
