New tank, new user plant question

Lots of people use plastic/silk plants all the time and never have live plants. Just choose fish that don't require live plants!(i can't think off any offhand). It;s really easy to look after plants, ask your lfs for some hardy plants
Good luck!

First off, welcome to AC, and also welcome to the slight insanity that is... LIVE PLANTS.

The general concensus is to start with plants, and then add fish. The plants will accomodate your fish to some degree (cycling, nitrAte removal, lowering of stress, etc.). However, there are a good number of plants that require little maintenance, light and nutrients, and these might be a good start off point for your tank.

The Easy Life Habitat has been a favorite starting place and reference for me. The plants listed therein (for the most part) are hard to kill, given even the dimmest of tank lights and just a little fertilizer. They also tend to grow slowly, so pruning and maintenance is lower than you might think.

There is a sticky on fishless cycling, and yes, you add the ammonia manually. It just has to be pure ammonia, no additives. It's a good way to cycle because you don't hurt any fish.

You can't fishless cycle with plants. If you want to do a 'silent cycle', where the plants basically eliminate the cycling process, you need to have your tank fairly well stocked with fast growing plants, high light (at least 2.5wpg), and CO2. In other words, you need a fast growth environment to suck up all the ammonia produced.

My advice to you if you're nervous about learning plants and fish at the same time (assuming you already have a tank and all) is to set up your substrate for live plants (2-3" of a good substrate for plants like Fluorite, Profile, Turface, etc.). Add a light dusting of peat to the bottom of the tank before you add the substrate, very light, just enough to lightly cover the glass, then add the substrate. Fill the tank slowly and do a fishless cycle.

Decide what plants you want while the tank is cycling and based on that, pick some easy to care for fish that will complement the tank. Your decision on plants will be based on how much light you want to invest in and whether you want to get into the whole CO2 adventure (over about 2wpg, you'll need to). Ask around here, peruse sites like www.thekrib.com , www.plantgeek.net , www.tropica.com to help make your decisions.

After you've gained some experience with fish, it will also give you some time to put together a hood more suited to growing plants, you can add the plants confident that you've got a quality substrate (full of fertilizer from fish poop). Oh! Get some Malasian Trumpet Snails, lots of 'em. They'll help keep your substrate loose and they'll carry fish wastes down into the substrate as they burrow.

So yeah, by then it should just be an issue of adding the new hood (more light) and plants (CO2?) and you'll be all set.

Ooops, I guess I should have made that more clear.

Rinse your substrate as well as you can before hand. Note that Fluorite doesn't rinse completely clean. Then fill it slowly (but all the way ) directing the water flow into a shallow bowl or saucer to decrease the amount of turbulence.

If you want an easy to use substrate that is also good for a planted tank, I recommend Eco-Complete. Its a black substrate that comes pre-washed and you don't need to add anything else (though a little peat at the bottom is always helpful). I've always had trouble planting stem plants in gravel that is less than 3" so get enough substrate to cover 3" in areas you are planning to plant.