Bombshocked

i love my small fish in a heavily planted tank, 

the green plants are anubias, i have a few variety's ive picked up over the time, the one pictured is coffeefolia, and the leaves are indeed loquat leaves, i have a tree that i planted a few years ago along with a guava tree that i get leaves from for the tank also, sadly the guava is not doing as well as the loquat,

my tank has cardinal tetras i picked up from morley aquariums along with the 2 chocs, and kuhli loaches, Otocinclus and a few Nannostomus beckfordi, i think they could all take the low ph, and im very interested in the seachem acid buffer ill check it out next trip to the store

i was using the pencil fish as dithers when appisto breeding but i found them to grow on me over time and became more interesting so after a few generations with the apistos, i was more interested in the pencil fish, they bred well in a low ph tank around 5 with very minimal light over a thick bed of java moss and not alot else 

ive noticed the chocolates going into crazy positions to get through the bucehlandra leaves and pick out food i love watching them, i think chocs in a small school 6-12 could take the center of a well planted 4 footer with a nice school of about 50 rasboras or ember tetras a few kuhlis on the bottom for cleanup heaps of wood and leaves would be awesome

Wow, Amazing pictures and write up thanks, i love choc gouramis, im keeping 2 at the moment with some cardinal tetras in a planted tank, running rain water at about 100 tds, PH is around 6 from the aqua soil and they seem to do nicely, but do enjoy it when i lower the ph on water change day, as a breeder im guessing you must have a solid way of reducing your ph safely would you use peat moss in the filter to lower it or just a commercially available PH down solution ive tried to use almond leaves, Loquat leaves,and guava leaves but it didn't have a strong enough buffering effect to lower the PH to an acceptable level against the aqua soil

your tanks look very clean and well laid out, i like the floating plants a lot, and the health of your fish speaks for it self, posts like these are what make forums my favorite type of media so thank you for posting it and giving me a good read, detailed information like this is excellent 

one day i would love to setup a species only tank for them and get a few more but at the moment thats not on the cards, there a super niche fish and im really glad someone else finds them as special of a fish as i do

Thanks