Okay.. it’s actually my second tank. My first tank was a month and a half ago and it was a 2-gallon low tech, but I had a large piece of wood in it and became a dark tank with tepid water. I used the plants from the old tank to help this new one cycle, and just got it planted up yesterday. This time I soaked this piece of spider wood and then heated it in a pot of water for a little bit.
In hindsight, and for my next tank, I wish I had done a smaller substrate of soil with a large amount of sand on top.. some areas are like an inch of soil to an inch of sand and as I was planting sometimes a little soil came up. I also had some problem stem plants that kept floating up and I forgot that I have those little aquarium weights that I could have wrapped around the bottom.
I moved my 4 RCS over from the old tank and they’re so much happier now, swimming all over and very active.