Matt's 220 Litre Aquaoak

Wow, your tank is gorgeous. You really do have a talent for aquascaping. Mine is definitely more jungle!

Well done on your tank "faffing" - it looks absolutely amazing; you clearly have a natural talent for aquascaping. Congrats also on the plant growth.

As for the red plants, what might be more palatable to Mrs Matt would be some plants which are green and red (eg the underside being one colour and the top another colour) or else where some leaves grow through as brown/red, positioned beside some red plants, so that the change in colour when the eyes are looking at/across the tank is gradual rather than dramatic. Hope that suggestion might be a feasible option for you / Mrs Matt.

[Edited to add some pics to illustrate above - please excuse dusting of plants due to red-coloured root tabs' upheaval and/or brown diatoms, as well as other decay/plant problems! Turn your head to left to view second one - it tries to capture both sides of the hemiographis colorata plant plus a (decaying) alternanthera rosaefolia in the background.]

For a plant that starts green, try rotala rotundiflora.

http://tropica.com/en/plants/plantdetails/Rotalarotundifolia(033)/4447

I have this as a background plant in my tank. It is relatively slow growing for a stem plant and it only turns red with lots of light - in my tank it turns pink as it reaches the surface because I have pretty low light.

I'll be keeping an eye out for that! Thanks @Helen That does look perfect for what I'm after 

....are you considering getting a larger group of the tiny bundles of adorableness? 

 

I, personally, would never need convincing on the topic of a larger tank.
However, if I were the non-fishkeeping half of a partnership, yes, I would think that getting a tank to fill the top of the cabinet would be perfectly reasonable. No point in having all of that empty space around the tank, especially when that space could be filled with dwarf puffers. 

lolol you guys...   

If you manage to get the cabinet fixed, or if you have to buy a new one for the fishtank, then it might be worth having a glass panel on top to protect it. My fishtank is on top of a unit bought at the same time and specifically because it came with this protective glass panel https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/storage-furniture/shelving-units-systems/best%C3%A5-top-panel-glass-white-art-20196529/ As far as I can recollect from 3.5 years ago, that was the only protective glass panel in stock ie they didn't make different-sized panels for different purposes or pieces of furniture - but I'm sure something similar could be bought from elsewhere. That's not to say that there isn't water damage on the doors and shelves underneath from water changes when, regardless of how many towels I have draped around, I seem to drench everything (including myself) and don't always get to wipe up the spills immediately.

Looks brill Matt...     I liked it before anyhoo, but I agree that the balance overall looks better now... 

The Amazon swords had got far too big on the left and right sides. I have got rid of a lot of the larger leaves and moved them to the middle. Took the opportunity to fiddle with the planting layout given some of the tips I'd been working up for an article on my website.  Looks a lot better I think.  Though I need to fiddle with the wood on the left hand side at some point as it doesn't look like it is all one piece at the moment. The best layouts have the wood all eminating from one point as this obviously looks more natural ( or you can do it from two points if you have a concave layout where you have a mound on both sides of the tank ) hopefully that makes sense?

Anyway here's a photo...

I will take one of the LHS later which is also vastly improved as this is one angle I view the tank from.