I've also realised I haven't put the photos of my journey to eliminate the fungus.................
I knew it wouldn't be easy to get the piece of wood and slate out, especially with the volcano mineral under the soil.
A bit of plastic shuttering helped to stop things from collapsing in completely.
I got the wood out eventually; gave it a scrub, put it back in place and covered it back over with volcano mineral.
Put some soil back on top and got it back to looking roughly as it did before.
The reason I decided to try the DSM was I thought the soil stood no chance of staying in place with the slopes I had. I put some tape roughly where the top of the soil was to see how much things moved and (very) slowly and nervously started to add some water
much to my surprise things stayed in place
Then it was time to start some gentle filtration
; I used the spraybar that came with the Oase as I was waiting for my glassware to arrive and again much to my surprise it still all stayed in place.
I added a few more plants in and things have settled down.
Just over a week has passed and the soil is still in place; I think I owe a lot of that to the JBL volcano mineral underneath the soil.
Some of the glassware has arrived so I've fitted that in place, I do plan to add another filter and skimmer attachment in the long run.