I wanted to create raised terraces in the corners, but my previous attempts hadn't worked. If you mound the substrate to the back, it eventually levels out. If you try to keep sand behind barriers, it slides around or under them (and I'm just not ready to glue things to the base of my tank. Finally I went with a mix of substrates - coarser gravel in the back corners and a plastic mesh supported by a "wall" of small pieces of slate. I covered that with sand and...it seemed to hold up.
I added some hardscaping, a large piece of driftwood, and started filling the tank. The raised portions seemed to hold up well, but I ran into the problem of floating driftwood. The piece of driftwood I was using had sat out of the water for more than three years. Since it was much too big to attempt the usual recommendation for floating driftwood (boil it to drive out the air) my only real option was patience. So I left things alone for a few more weeks while the driftwood became waterlogged.
Finally I bought some plants, got things set up, and finally I have a tank.
I'll give the plants a while to get established before I add fish, filtration, and maybe, just maybe, a CO2 system.
I'm hopeful things will turn out better this time. The old location seemed good, but it did have light shining through a south-facing window into a corner of the tank. That might have been a large part of my algae problem. They say that CO2 additions tend to tip the balance in favour of vascular plants. So if I got that way, I might have fewer problems. And, I suppose, I just need to intervene more. As much as I like Java moss, it might not be the best way to go - it's impossible to get algae out of Java moss. So I'll see.
