Putting it together

Putting it together. When I'm setting up a new planted aquarium, I often assemble the mix for the lower layer separately. It might contain dry cat-litter laterite and Flourite, sand, grit, fine gravel and moistened peat moss. I set it in dry by cupfuls among the rocks, which have been the first things to be set in place, and I shape it.
 
Then I spritz down the aquarium walls before I add some of my upper layer of substrate, composed of fine gravel, Flourite, and coarse builder's sand. Then very gently I add water, full of detritus siphoned out of a mature tank, if I can get it, to cover by about an inch. Then I plant in the shallow water. 
 
 
The next step is an important one, which nobody seems to follow: I siphon out all the water. Before I add even a grain of substrate, I have first temporarily taped a short section of rigid tubing into a convenient front corner, about a coin's thickness above the bottom glass. Once planting is completed, I use the empty tube as a temporary well, from which I slowly siphon every available drop of silty water out of the aquarium. The trick is to use a length of airline tubing, temporarily taped in place, while you take a break and attend to other things. The drawn-off water is the color of a cheap vanilla milkshake. I mop up the last bit with a clean towel.
 
I spritz all the glass, plants, rocks and wood, and the surface of the substrate repeatedly and re-siphon, until all the surfaces are clean and most of the silt has been drawn down into the substrate, which is just where I want it.
 
How to innoculate the new system? My next step is to spread gravel, scraped carefully off the undisturbed topmost surface of a clean, balanced, well-matured aquarium's substrate,  covering as much of the surface as I can manage with a very thin layer. This seeds the new tank better than a mere  teaspoonful of gravel in a filter. Once the filter is running, perhaps I will also be able to spare some gunk siphoned out of another system.
 
When I'm not rushed and plan ahead, I start the filter for the new aquarium in an established one, and let it run for a month, supplementing the established filter. Dr. Erik Johnson uses a koi pond filter to seed a new aquarium. Look at Dr Johnson's clear and illustrated directions for "bioseeding" with filter gunk, at Koivet.
 
Finally, I gently pull up rooted plants lightly, so that their crowns, from which leaves emerge and roots descend, sare not buried and the thin rhizone of Anubias is free.  Now I refill the tank very gingerly, pouring into a flat saucer that sits on a piece of cardboard. The initial cloudiness is often still fierce. I'm always disappointed and cross about my own clumsiness. But I let the whole thing settle for 48 hours or until the water is clear, and then I gently siphon over the surfaces, before even thinking about starting the filtration.
 
 
 
By the way, once some biofilm has begun to build up, bacterial floc will bind the colloidal silt in the laterite, and it won't cloud the water any longer, even with some gentle disturbance. But I don't mess with it for the first six weeks. Even if some plants do come floating to the surface, I repress the temptation to replant them.
 
I was so clumsy setting up a show tank in 2010 that I disturbed the substrate and clouded the water with a white silty fog. Patiently running the filter with a sponge covering the inlet, which I squeezed out daily, and depending on the natural propensity of silt to flocculate, cleared the water perfectly in about ...well, to be frank, in about six weeks. How does Takashi Amano achieve that instant clarity?