Plant Help

if you have enough light and CO2, and put in enough fast growing plants at the beginning along with your fish, you won't even need to "cycle" per se. it's called the silent cycle.

edit- I didn't see your other questions. woosh.

How much money do you want to spend on this tank? your biggest expense will probably be lighting. with a smallER tank like 29g I'd shoot for 3wpg.(watts per gallon) of fluorescent lighting, or 87 watts all together. CO2 is the other thing you'll need. Oh, and fertilizers. flourish is a good fertilizer that contains all the mironutrients.

If you really want to slpurge, you could get a pressurized CO2 setup( I have one for my 55g) but they can get kinda spendy. I happened to get my co2 cylinder for free so it wasn't too bad, $60 for the regulator and needle valve. I made the reactor and bubble counter with spare parts I had lying aorund. a 5 lb CO2 tank will be about another $60. Otherwise, you can use the yeast/sugar CO2 method and get all the equipment for about $2. it requires more maintenance though.

HTH

I'm guessing since he's never had plants before that he doesn't have a lot of light & CO2.

IMO you should get some java fern, java moss, some different kinds of anubias, hornwort, crypt wendtii (any crypt that's not too exotic). Your tank should have about 2 watts of light per gallon of water. Not too much more or less. The light should be "daylight" bulbs... nothing too red or blue. If you check the bulb it should be about 6700k (find that on the packaging somehwhere). Check out the book Aquarium Plants Manual which, I think, is a must read for beginners.

Ask lots of questions. Check www.thekrib.com if you need more info. I read a good quote about the krib... it's like asking for a drink of water and getting a fire-hose.

Plants are a fun & healthy way to enjoy your fish tank.

<edit> ChicoRaton adding 3wpg of light, CO2 & heavy nutrients is, in my opinion, bad advice to give beginner. He/she does not have the requisite knowledge to find the correct balance. It is much better for beginners to go with low light, low maintenance until they figure out how to control algae & correctly balance the tank. You can always add more light & CO2 later, but if you start with that you are going to have a greater probability of having some nasty algae problem and get turned off to the whole idea of live plants.