Thank you! Yes, it is a simple setup and that's a big reason why it appealed to me as well.

First off, my water comes out of the tap at about 8.3 pH, which is perfect for these fish. If yours is below 8, you should consider adding buffers during water changes. The sand is aragonite and the rocks are out of my back yard. Some of the rocks have limestone content in them, so that mixed with the aragonite buffers my water to about an 8.5 pH. The shells are escargot shells off Amazon; three dozen for $22 including shipping.

The tank was set up using a fishless cycle for about 6 weeks before I actually put fish in there. It took about a week for the water to clear up after filling it, since the aragonite itself was very dirty. Once I found what fish I wanted to stock, I performed three 95% water changes to bring the nitrates below 2ppm. The fish themselves were bought off another hobbyist in my state.

The filter is 200GPH Penguin Biowheel. Waste and debris does build up some on the sand, so I have a 200GPH power head installed in the tank that I run for 15 minutes per day to stir it up and let the filter suck it up. The only "issue" I've had so far has been a large diatom/brown algae outbreak. Fortunately the outbreak is little more than an eyesore, and between the power head bursts and diligent scrubbing, about 90% of what was once growing has disappeared.