Beginner to planted tanks

[jestes]

Hello everyone. I'm obviously new to this site, but so far it seems like there are some knowledgeable people who could help me. Here's what I'm planning on doing:

I'm looking at setting up a 55 gallon planted tank. About the only thing I know for sure is that I'll need about 120 watts of lighting. Beyond that, I'm a little lost. I plan on having a pretty good amount of plants, so I'll need some sort of CO2 injection, but I don't know the best route to go. It seems I've got 3 options:

1: Automated CO2 injection with a controller. This seems like a very hands off setup, once it's up and running, but I don't know if I'm ready to spend the $250+ for a controller, regulator, ect. I do like the fact that the controller will handle the PH balance for me, as I understand.

2: Semi-automatic CO2 seems like a lower cost option, but I'm not sure about the reliability. I'd hate to loose a bunch of plants/fish just to save a few bucks on equipment. I don't mind chasing the right settings during the initial setup, but I don't want to have to constantly do that.

3: Some sort of yeast based fermentation seems like the lowest cost option, but before the year is out, I probably could have bought a top of the line CO2 setup for what the replacement costs of the fermentation system would be.


So, could someone please shed some light on this for me? I really don't know enough about any one method to have a well-informed opinion. Is there a way to make a good do-it-yourself setup that's still reliable? I'm pretty handy, so I don't mind doing a little building/tinkering on my own.

Thanks in advance!!