Would this idea be worth a shot?

[Chrisfits]

I was thinking of getting a few small/medium terracotta pots & anchoring them against/under large driftwood or stones and building the substrate up & over them trying to keep the opening inaccessible.
I want to use the plant specific substrate in the pots & have a mix of sand/small gravel as the main tank substrate, I want to give some water lillys a shot up one end so it's sheltered for the splendida, probably java fern to attach to the driftwood, maybe some duckweed or some floating plant or even another taller growing potted plant.
The fish that will be sharing the tank initially will be petenia splendida, nandopsis tetracanthus & a red devil (potentially) it's a 220g tank so depending on how the juvies go & who looks better I may get rid of a couple once they've grown to a sexable size.
Any suggestions or problems with this idea let me know.
Cheers

[Bas Pels]

Altough I use plastic pots - this is what I have done for years.

The plants grow nicely, they do have a good soil - while the sand in the tank remains clean

I especially like Echionodorus - and these need a rather heavy soil to grow. You would not want to mix this with the sand cichlids are digging in

[Chrisfits]

That's awesome.. I'm definitely going to do that. Yeah the last thing I'd want is soil spread throughout the sand.

[Bas Pels]

my favourite pots are emtied comercial containers for foodstuff. Here, in NL I apprecialte the peanut sause containers the most.

These are brown - thus easy to hide, circular and have nice dimensions - I'd guess 15 cm diameter and 8 cm high - that 6 incehs and 3

Obviously, thesae containers might be used for something else in the US - or perhaps something like it is sold in such containers.

[Don Danko]

Any pics of these approaches?
Thanks,
Don