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Alright, I've more or less finalized the design of this tank, and the kinds of fish in it. It'll be for medium to kinda large exotic fish. So far planned I have a leporinus, ctenopoma acusitoire, queen arabesque pleco, and maybe a senegal bichir, but I think I'll just keep him chilling with my cichlids, since they're all doing fine. Questions:

My LFS had "plant grow" lights, "sunlight" lights... people will say "find the kelvin!" and whatnot, but they really don't tend to list it. I read in another post that sunlight bulbs are best, and plant grow are too much.

I'm going to be using co2. My pH comes out of the tap very low, around 5.0, and very soft. Considering the fish I'm keeping, I'll try to get my pH around 7.0 - 7.3, and neutral in hardness.

My co2 will be: http://www.floridadriftwood.com/product.asp?0=217&1=253&3=147

Only a few "hills" in my aquarium will be heavily planted with more difficult plant species, and for that I'd like to use specific gravel. Laterite, flourite? That expensive dekoline gravel? http://www.floridadriftwood.com/subcatmfgprod.asp?0=242&1=280&2=-1&6=1

Also, the power filters that come with the 55 gallon "kits"-- are those good enough? Or should I just buy a bare 55 and get a different filter? Since I'm gonna have sand in there, UGFs are not an option. I'll probably need to buy a bunch of malaysian trumpet snails to keep the anaerobic bacteria away, right? Will they eat the plants?

Will my choice of fish eat the plants? I'm pretty sure the ctenopoma wouldn't, but I'm iffy on the others.

...Whoo, that was a lot of questions. Sorry!

PS: I apologize again if this is in the wrong place.

[font color="#800080"]MTS won't eat plants they're the best snail ever . You should only need a few as they'll reproduce on their own.

Just go for a bare 55, the filters that come with the tanks are generally not the best quality, and are also underrated for the tank.

If you're injecting co2 you'll want to keep surface agitation to a minimum so no biowheels.

Mixing sand and gravel is often rather difficult what are your plans on keeping the two from mixing.[/font]

I'm thinking plastic dividers before putting in any substrate.