I gutted and re-landscaped my 6g tank shortly before Christmas. It took about three hours and required a fairly dramatic rethinking about what I can do with the tank.

• Because most of the plants in Asgard were quite old and starting to look raggedy or algae-stressed, I removed them all. Every last one. I was careful to suction the now-bare substrate aggressively, but not completely, since I don't want to obliterate all the beneficial bacteria that lives therein. I removed my beloved moss-covered driftwood piece and threw it away. I plucked out some dreadful little pebbles I'd put in the tank a long time ago and combed the entire substrate until it was ready for the next step.
• I decided I quite like light sand in the foreground. From Justin, I bought a 10 lb. bag of sand. It's not as fine as what Amano uses and does a better job of allowing water to circulate. Justin cut me a 12" strip of non-toxic plastic that I bent into an arc and dug into the existing substrate. I spooned/sucked out all of the substrate in front of the arc, leaving a pocket about an inch high that revealed the floor of the tank. Into this pocket, I poured about a pound of sand, until it spilled over the edge of the plastic strip, allowing me to carefully merge the foreground sand with the background substrate for a stream-bed effect.
• From Steven and George I bought a small piece of driftwood, a fist-sized Amano-style rock, and half a dozen much smaller rocks that look like miniature boulders. I used the driftwood and rocks to frame the sand in the foreground, separating it from the coarser substrate in the background.
• I then planted several small plants that don't require demanding light (my T5 provides only 1.5 watts per gallon). I added short Valisneria and multiple varieties of Cryptos from Justin, plus a dot of Java moss and new-growth Acorus that I preserved from the landscape I'd just demolished.

While the new design is less busy and feels more like a natural stream bed, I am reminded of how apparent the background appliances are.

I'd like to experiment with a tank that doesn't rely on fast-growing stem plants to stave off algae. Asgard has always been the tank with which I experiment most vigorously. The challenge of maintaining stable water chemistry in such a nano-environment coupled with the absence of stem plants should prove interesting. I've been extra careful to redesign the landscape with real estate for the emergency intervention of stem plants should they be required...or should I grow bored of looking at pipes and tubes in the background.

In the meantime, the killifish, rasboras, and shrimps all seem to be adjusting to their radically different home quite nicely.