Well... I have some time on my hands, so I'll give it my best shot. Keep in mind I'm kinda half dead right now, so if I miss anything, I apologize.. hopefully someone will pick up any mistakes I might have made by accident.
For a high light setup:
You are going to want more than 2wpg of lighting for your tank. In your case 20watts or more. You can check out Home Depot and simliar hardware stores for decently priced fluorescent lights. Or you can check out places such as
www.ahsupply.com for decently priced compact fluorescent (CF) setups. I personally like CF lighting, and thats all I use on my plant tanks. If you buy from ahsupply, a 2x13 watt kit will do quite nicely for your tank. With any kind of lighting setup, you want light bulbs with a kelvin rating ranging from 5000k-6700k.
With more than 2wpg of lighting CO2 injection is a must. Check out welding supply places for double guage regulators and CO2 tanks. Or you can try
www.kegworks.com for a good double guage CO2 regulator. You will also need a good needle valve attached to your regulator to fine tune the rate of CO2 flow. You can check out specialty valve stores for that. I know there are websites that sell needle valves, but I don't recall their addresses... hopefully someone else can better inform you on that. There is also a DIY method in producing CO2. Check out this
link for more info. For a small tank such as yours, injecting the CO2 via an airstone should surfice. Or you could always run the CO2 line into your filter or a powerhead.
For fertillzation, you are going to want to keep nitrate levels at around 5-10ppm (or more if you can't help it). If you find your nitrate levels are constantly dipping down to zero, you want to boost those levels using KNO3. KNO3 can be found as stump remover at your local home centre, or as potassium nitrate at a hydroponics shop. You also want to dose your tank once a week with potassium, a tiny bit of phosphate, and a bit of iron. All of these fertillzers can be found at your pet store, or at your hydroponics shop. Personally, I use seachem's flourish potassium, and iron in my tanks. I currently do not dose phosphates since my tap water has enough of it. Ever 2-3 days you also want to dose trace elements. I use Seachem's Flourish Trace for this. On my 70 gallon tank, I currently dose 3-4 capful of potassium once a week, and one and a half capfuls of iron. I dose with 2-3 capfuls of Trace ever 2-3 days, and enough KNO3 every few days to keep my nitrate levels at 5-10ppm.
When it comes to water changes, you want to do a 40-50% water change once a week. There is no a need to gravel vac the substrate as the buildup in organics within the substrate will benefit the plants.
For moderate/low setups:
You want to keep your lighting under 2 wpg. A 13 watt setup should do quite nicely for your tank. You will also want to keep the bulbs in a kelvin range of 5000k-6700k. Check out this
linke in the archives for more info on such a setup.
Although CO2 is not needed in such a setup, it can help quite nicely.
Since you are going to pull out your UGF, I'd suggesting getting another filter for your tank and running for a couple of weeks before pulling out your UGF. Even though plants can be awesome filters in themselves, you still want some sort of backup when it comes to biological filtration.
With either setup (high light or low/moderate) you want to cram that tank with as many fast growing/cheap plants as you can. After allowing the tank a few weeks to stabilize, you can begin to slowly remove some plants and add others.
HTH
-Richer
