Lone dwarf gourami tank upgrade

A couple of days ago I picked up 2 tanks: 15 and 30g.
Working on the 15g to move Mr blurami from his current digs (10g)
Both tanks came with lights, one filter, and covers.

So far I've cleaned and scrubbed the small tank and the filter.
Upgraded the light to LED (hood had old incandescent, screw-on bulbs system), and my son and I spent a couple of hours rigging the LED to fit in the hood and installing a new switch for it, it was nice work and great fun.

The 30g rated filter will be used on the 15g, I'll put it on the lowest flow. It is currently getting "seasoned" on my 29g community tank. I'll leave it there a couple of weeks or so to allow bacteria to grow on it.

I'm undecided on substrate. My son, who's in charge of Mr blurami, likes gravel. But he also understands it's harder to clean than sand. So I'm thinking of doing half and half, still unsure if I'd do it lengthwise or depthwise, but I feel like trying that as a compromise and finally getting a feeding ring for this guy.

As for plants: I'll move all of them to the new tank. A couple of bamboo shoots, ludwigia, nana petite, and ferns. I want to plant it in a more "organized" way, kind of keeping each type of plant together, and I'm thinking of adding some decoration, most likely some wood, and floating plants, looking at frogbit, to have the long roots hang down.

Then I plan on getting one or two female dwarves, and see what they do. If Mr blurami starts beating them up, I'll move them to the community tank and that will be the final try for me to try to get this guy to live together with any other fish.

I should've taken before and after pics, the tank is in good shape but it was DIRTY, and so were the accessories. Plus that upgrade to LED while keeping the hood intact was quite the feat for my son, I'm most proud of that.

Sounds like a good plan!

An idea for the two female dwarves is to quarantine them for a few weeks and watch them carefully. Then build up their confidence by putting them into the main tank. Also make sure there is a lot of hiding in the 15g. Keep the females in the community tank for a month or two and then move them in with the male. This will allow the females to really get home before being thrown in with a known aggressor. Take it slow with the females so that way they have the confidence instead of being tossed in all stressed. Then they may die quickly.

Don't mix sand and gravel, it doesn't work. Just have sand or gravel.

Gravel is easy to clean with a gravel cleaner.

Update.
Today was moving day for Mr blurami. I have a feeling that the new lights are too bright for his liking. I'm evaluating what to do about this. I don't have a timer, so I'll be reducing the light time.

I'm hoping this doesn't go bad for the plants, which seemed like have been suffering recently, i suspect the floaters were spreading too much and not letting enough light pass by. The moss is all but dried up, and out of 3 of the red ludwigia shoots I planted, one is gone, one is almost leafless and one seems ok, although I uprooted it for now and let it float.

I've removed about half the floaters, this however seems to aggravate the brightness (mr blurami hides behind the filter every time we turn them on). So my options are at this point to limit light time amd/or try to put some sort of "light filter" between the light and the glass to reduce the brightness.
long term I'll move my programmable LED light to this tank, once I move the 29g inhabitants to the 55g (And then I'll see if those stock lights are OK, but most likely I'll be adding a programmable LED bar for that one too)
I have no stand for that tank yet, so that move is nowhere near soon.

Any suggestions so both this fish and the plants in here thrive?

The blue background was my son's choice. I think a darker one would make everything pop better, we'll see if we try that down the road.