Lorenzo's Fish Tank

So I meant to post sooner but school has just started back up and I just completed my first (and hopefully last) med school interview at Mercer… so this is the first chance I’ve gotten to sit down and collect my thoughts about the list of species I would like to keep in Monstro.

First, here is a drawing of my overall goal for how I want the tank to look:

I hope I’ve drawn it out well enough so you can see the depth of the picture.. if that makes sense, and there are random initials written all over the picture to help me keep track of what species I want where.  Hopefully the cave and tree can be distinguished at least in the pic.. since they will make up the focal pt for the tank. The white part coming out of the cave will be bare sand on top of flourite/gravel substrate with some rock decor, mimicking a stream of some sort perhaps? Like I said, I was drawing this from the two tanks I posted from my last entry..

Here’s my current list of plant species I want for the tank:

Foreground: Anubias nana petite, Dwarf Baby Tears, Peacock Moss, Fontanus fissidens

Middle ground: Star moss, Hydrocotyle verticillata, Anubias nana, Echinodorus tenellus, Didiplis diandra

Background: Rotala Rotundifolia, Dwarf Ambulia, Cardamine lyrata, Microsorum pteropus

List of fauna I currently want for the tank:

3-4 Otocinclus vittatus; 4-5 Habrosus corydoras; 1 trio (1m+2f) of showa swordtails; 10 Cardinal tetras; 1 large golden brigg snail (aka apple snail); and a population of red cherry shrimp

Once I start cycling my tank, I think I will add the animals in the following order: Red cherry shrimp, ottos, Apple snail, Habrosus, Cardinal tetras, then finally showa swordtails since they seem to be the hardest to find.  Also debating getting some Malaysian trumpet snails since some sites I’ve been on recommend them for sand substrate to keep anaerobic bacteria colonies from developing, I’m not sure if my sand substrate will be deep enough though yet for this to be an issue.. so we’ll see.  They are all adorable and I can’t wait until my tank is suitable to start housing all of them!

Because I’m a nerd I’m uploading pics of each of the type of fish so you can see what each looks like (pics in order respectively of list of fauna):