Plant grow out tank help

I’ve never done anything with live plants and have wanted to for so long now. I plan on planting one of my existing tanks sometime in the future. I’d like to have a little experience with plants beforehand and see how certain plants do in my water, and well I don’t have the budget for redoing my tanks since they’re on the larger side. I recently set up a “ Quarantine cabinet” as you can see in the picture. It’s 3 20 gallon longs I plan on using as quarantines/hospital tanks. I’d like one of them to be a plant grow out tank instead. I don’t have any lights or substrate yet obviously, and I’m definitely on a budget. Any cheap reliable aquarium light recommendations? Substrate recommendations as well? Is it cheaper to get inert substrate and use root tabs and fertilizers or just get nutrient rich substrate? I was thinking of adding Seachem eco complete as I’ve heard good things about it, and it’s not as expensive as others. But i have no experience so that’s where you all come in haha. Oh and maybe list some good plants to start out with. The tank is only 12 inches tall so nothing crazy crazy tall but I know I’ll have to do some trimming for sure. Thanks for the help everyone!

 

Ludwigia roundleaf is my personal favorite, Italian Valisneria or jungle Val, water wysteria, rotala, hornwort, anacharis, etc (I love stem plants)

 

What are your water parameters, especially pH and hardness?

I really recommend using dirt as your substrate with a sand cap. It's cheap and provides a lot of nutrients. I had ecocomplete and didn't like it. It has a lot of surface area and pores but no usable nutrients. It's also sharp and wasn't a good match for the fish I wanted to keep. Live and learn I guess.

I have awesome luck with growing amazon swords and getting then to make babies that I spread to all my tanks. Crypts, water wisteria, and anacharis have grown well for me. Dwarf sag is a pretty easy foreground plant that has survived when all my s repens died. Aponogeton grow fast and get big

 

What are your water parameters, especially pH and hardness?

I really recommend using dirt as your substrate with a sand cap. It's cheap and provides a lot of nutrients. I had ecocomplete and didn't like it. It has a lot of surface area and pores but no usable nutrients. It's also sharp and wasn't a good match for the fish I wanted to keep. Live and learn I guess.

I have awesome luck with growing amazon swords and getting then to make babies that I spread to all my tanks. Crypts, water wisteria, and anacharis have grown well for me. Dwarf sag is a pretty easy foreground plant that has survived when all my s repens died. Aponogeton grow fast and get big

Oh I complete forgot about adding the water parameters haha sorry about that.
PH: 7.5
GH: 5-6 DGH
KH: 5-6 DKH
The tanks are still cycling at the moment so there’s some ammonia.
And any recommendations on what kind of substrate you’re referring to, brand wise etc. I’m just trying to set up a nice cheap low tech little grow out tank, so whatever’s most effective for the cost seems good to me. And do you have any recommendations for a light as well?

Ludwigia roundleaf is my personal favorite, Italian Valisneria or jungle Val, water wysteria, rotala, hornwort, anacharis, etc (I love stem plants)

Thanks for the list of plants! I’ll do some research and check it all out

 

Your parameters look fine for most plants.

Dirt= organic soil like you'd plant flowers or veggies in and buy from a hardware store for $5 a bag. If there's no livestock, you don't have to worry much about fertilizers or additives. I'd personally avoid any with perlite because it floats and is messy. This guy walks you thru picking dirt pretty well

A 20 long is pretty shallow so a cheap light should work pretty well but it will also depend on what plants you pick and if they're low, medium, or high light. Amazon has a sale going on hygger and nicrew lights and they're both pretty good entry level brands. I've also heard generally good things about beamwork but don't own any of theirs.

 

I just set up a similar thing just for plants and am using Tropica Aquasoil. Everything thus far is growing well. Lot's of nutrients in the soil and really easy to plant into.....

 

If you have room in your back yard and reasonable temp - a good way to buy plants is to buy one of those $5 or $10 plastic containers like walmart, homedepot, lowes, target, ... sell. They come in sizes from less than 20 gallons to over 60 gallons. Not great if you want to watch fishes but for a summer project you can power the harness of the sun for light It seems to be more reliable than those lights that run on electricity and to my knowledge they don't charge for its usage....