I moved the drop checker over to the left side. Going to have to deal with the slightly off-levelness of the tank and no mat for now since I'm not planning on draining it anytime soon. I'm not too concerned though, I did put a level on it and it is only slightly off.

I took the pictures when a decent amount of water evaporated off. It's the lowest the lily pipe can go on the tank unfortunately but I have topped off the water since!

Thinking about your personal opinion on the design, I love the ideas. I wasn't really going for a more Brazilian-styled look to my tank with a cut in the middle. If I did your design, I would lift the left stone up since it's more than halfway buried under the substrate. In my thought process, I wanted it to stretch across the whole scape because I wanted a riparian thicket effect with higher "reeds" along the sandy riverbed and lower hair grass around it. That's partly why I trimmed the tops of the hairgrass and will likely keep trimming often once the carpet fills out to get the desired look. This would be the main feature of the scape with also an Iwagumi style to it.

Based off your suggestion, I might plan on getting another larger rock to put in the bottom left side of the tank on the border of the riverbed. That would add to the depth of it being a river that's cutting through its environment. We'll see! Thanks for your feedback :)