Gravel out and vast majority of the water as well. Next I moved the tank out and hovered behind for the first time in years - yuck. Also added the black self adhesive film which was a little tricky but looked pretty good when done.
Hoofed in the large bucket of cleaned cat litter and slapped it in - so far so good. Next - fill her back up.
Oh dear - not as clean as I thought!
I was expecting to be able to put the plants and fish back in at this point but decided to let it clear before. So filter on and I put a heater in the bucket containing the fish.
It's a nice day so we went out for 3-4 hours.
Got back and it was starting to clear so in went the plants. These are by no means their final place but it looks ok for now. After splitting the crypts I ended up with 12-15 small plants. Have put these in a group and am hoping these will fill out over time. I may move them closer as I'm sure it will take some time to fill out.
Any long roots were trimmed which should encourage new growth. I split my vallis up creating a nice patch at the back and grouped the swords together - still no real improvement on these but their roots looked good and I will be adding root tabs tomorrow.
A while later it had cleared some more so not wanting to leave the fish in a bucket any longer, I put them back in. They all seem to be doing ok admiring their new carpet.
So there we are - cat litter in and hopefully tomorrow the water will clear again. I will check my params every day.
LMFAO!!
Organised chaos...
Ha ha - I ain't changing substrate again for a loooooong time.
I was told about it by a friend so can't take full credit, lol. 
