Hello! Well I bit the bullet and added my wood and filled the tank this weekend. The water is looking a little cloudy but I think the black substrate and black background help to hide the yellow tannins.
Here's the pics!
I put the media from my internal in the bottom layer of the EX1200, between the ceramics and the carbon filter - I hope this was the right way to go about it! One piece was really nice and mucky but the other bit had only been in the filter for 1 1/2 weeks but hopefully had something useful on it.
The swap over was pretty uneventful apart from the requisite rasbora attempting suicide...he's fine. Here's the end result. There's is a lot of change to happen yet. You can't really see it but there's wisteria planted along the whole back left and there's at least 15 crypts in there that will, with a bit of luck, spring to life in the next couple of weeks.
In the end I think I'll probably remove some of the crypts and wisteria and add some twisted vallis, amazon sword and bacopa. I'm broke so I'm working with what I've got lol!
Please feel free to make recommendations.
From the left:
From the right:
The fish, especially the rasbora are really enjoying the change of scenery - my betta is coping with the flow but I think I'll be increasing the size of the holes in the spraybar to ease things a bit.
If you dudes and dudettes would like to suggest future stocking plans I would love to hear them! Increasing rasbora and cory numbers need to be in there and I really fancy the idea of adding some cardinal tetras as well
Thanks for looking!!
, I'm pretty sure they'll grow back so thats good. Did you get a new light unit?? 
