33L is the chosen tank (short but long), and I'm hoping to do a leaf-mold substrate (~4in deep - I have primarily oak forest around me to collect from), manzinita wood for furniture, and trying to avoid any significant rock work. Water will be RO and/or distilled and treated with wild almond, oak, and beech leaves primarily (which will also be added as more leaf litter in the tank) to bring the pH down (4-5.5?) and probably variable between 4 and 6 inches deep, possibly deeper depending on how I plant.
The planting will ideally be a clump of a blackwater crypt species (which the whole tank is primarily designed around) and I will entertain ideas of other plants that might work - I envision some mosses of the Vesicularia genus like Xmas, Weeping, Erect and Singapore moss (which are listed in the Melasian Moss Database), and maybe one of the tiny threadlike forms of Java Fern but don't know if they can handle those conditions. Ideally I see them growing emergently on the manzinita that will go above the water line (since it needs to be rather shallow) and just trailing into the water to break up the monotony of the crypts. I've not decided on if it will have a sump or not since I've not done one before... but I've entertained having a sump full of sphagnum moss, emersed java fern, and maybe utricularia all to help scrub the water on top of other filtration (as yet undetermined, but not high flow). Light will be low, and likely only one cool white bulb, possibly two.
Fish will ideally be some Licorice Gouramis (Paros - which should thrive in those conditions and at least one species is often collected from clumps of blackwater crypts) with a Boraras sp as a dither fish (B. merah preferably if I can get the rest of the stuff from Borneo, otherwise B. maculatus) which are also collected with some Paro species and look their best in these conditions.
Ideally I'd like to have it Borneo specific but I don't know how hard it would be to get the crypt and Paro species from there, so I may have to keep it to what I can find
Thoughts? Recomendations?
This is why I love you guys!
I know it makes for a dark tank, but shier species like Paros tend to not like it (floating crypt leaves on the surface seem to be why they like hiding in them), and I didn't think the crypts were particularly light hungry either.