You can go with live plants. Low light plants like Java Ferns, Crypts and the like would work pretty well without having to get into expensive lighting setups.
If you're light hood has two sockets to accept incandescent bulbs, go to Walmart and pick up a couple of compact fluorescent bulbs. you can find them for about $4 in the fish section. They're usually rated at about 10W so two would get you 2 watts per gallon or WPG. you'll hear WPG thrown around a lot inreference to live plants. 2 WPG is on the low end of moderate when referring to light in a tank. If they have 15W bulbs you're even better off.
Plants in a new tank will help your fish in the cycle since they will eat some of the ammonia produced by the fish/food waste. Keep it simple with a couple of inexpensive, low light plants. Plants like crypts are rooting plants that you will plant in the substrate. Java Fern will cling to wood and ornaments in a tank but you'll have to anchor them there with fishing line at first.
Some folks will tell you that you need flourite substrate and fertilizers and CO2 and compact power fluorescent light kits to raise plants. those things will help but as long as you don't try to raise difficult or high light plants you'll be fine with 20W of fluorescent lights and gravel.
10g is not a huge tank so you are limited in fish choice both in size and number. Ask yourself what you want out of the fish in the tank. Lots of fish? A couple of really pretty fish? Active fish? Odd fish? Breeding fish? Colorful fish? When you have an idea of what you want out of the tank its easier to narrow down the choices.
Keep in mind that when you think about choosing fish you have to go by their adult size not the size they are in the store. For instance, a common pleco is only about 2" long in the store but they will grow to 18"! This is a really common pitfall.
Tom
