Thank you for your comments, peeps
I still don't think the pictures do it justice, tbh
They're not cardinals; they're green neons; I try and keep red out of my tanks; red and orange remind me of goldies, lol! (Nothing against goldies, but they were all I was allowed to have growing up as trops were "too expensive and too delicate"; if I'm having trops, I want them to
look like trops!)
Coal doesn't affect water params; this tank is filtered rainwater for the Rams and is a constant 6.6 pH; it used to drift up to 7.2 or .4 until I changed the substrate; you can still see some of the old stuff as paler bits against the blacker stuff where I didn't get it all out
Vallis, I find to be funny stuff; it doesn't like being moved really; if you find a place where it's happy it'll go mad, if not it just dies off. I've a feeling that
might be Sagittaria of some kind though, although I don't think even that would stand a chance against Uaru