Just finished placing the plants after 4 weeks of cycling a dark start. Really stoked to see some life (albeit of a stationary kind) in my tank at last. 60x30x36cm tank with a Fluval 307. CO2 is on for 7 hours through an inline diffuser, light is a Chihiros WRGB 2 Slim and come on 2 hours later. I have a few questions:

• Is the substrate layer at the front too high? I placed some crush lava rock as a base layer below aquasoil, but I see most scaping videos with a substrate of about 2-3cm or so (this is closer to 4.5cm at parts).

• Is the position of the lily pipe OK or should I move the outflow to the same side as the inflow?

• I feel like I removed a little too much root from some pieces of my DHG when taking them out of pots and trying to remove the cotton layer. Are they able to propogate if 90% of it is the blade and there's only a white nub at the root?

• My floaters keep floating to the surface skimmer so I made a makeshift ring in the middle. I read that anubias/buce are algae magnets at the start so I have some floaters to absorb excess nutrients/shade the epiphytes (they have drifted slightly to the right in this picture). The ring is barely large enough to hold all of them though. Do they propogate if confined to a ring like this? I might eventually remove most of them once conditions have stabilized.

• My water is very soft ~2 dGH. I am planning to introduce amano shrimps about 2 weeks later, and other fishy friends the week after. Should I increase GH now or wait for the shrimp before increasing them? Would plants take a while to acclimitize to GH changes?

• On the topic of amanos should I cover the top of the tank or just leave it open? I've seen horror videos of them doing their best Free Solo enactments, so I'm wondering how often that happens.

• I'm planning to go with a few amanos and otos for cleanup, but am undecided about what fish to use. I'm thinking about 2 nano fish groups ~2-4cm. Or would a single Apisto work if I used just one school of nano fish? Temp of the tank is around 27C, 6.5pH (that drops to 6 when CO2 comes on) and low KH/GH. Any stocking suggestions would be much appreciated!