If you want to grow plants, you might want to get a better substrate. The colored enamel gravel doesn't have too many nutrients that plants like--it may not have any if there is no mulm or detritus in it. I'd pull out that colored gravel and put a healthy scoop of Eco-Complete or any of the Seachem gravels in there and off you should go. Two or three pounds of it should be fine if you have any available. I'm not sure what you should do if you have none available.
Depending on how you want your plants and what kind of plants you want, there are some things you'll need. These recommendations are for a higher light, higher growth mini planted tank. You can also do a low light, low tech planted tank using slow growing plants, very little lighting and perhaps not even any CO2.
For the high light/tech tank, you'll have to find a way to get the pH and the KH measured and dose a tiny bit of nitrates if your other tank water doesn't have enough in it. Aim for 10-20 ppm unless you're trying to bring out reds--and this can be considered fairly advanced aquatic plant keeping without grow lots of algae at the same time. Keep your CO2 at least around 20-30 ppm and your phosphates very low. With the DIY CO2, on a small tank--and I've kept one before--I'd try to get on a cycle with 2 separate DIY CO2 containers so you can swap out about ever 3 weeks or so in order to have the peak of the CO2 production going non-stop. There, you're mileage may vary depending on amount of sugar used, water temp, yeast productivity, etc. Also you will most likely need to increase your lighting to at least 10wpg of pc lighting to grow more light demanding plants. I'd try one 13W first and go from there for lights. That may do it, but again it may not. I was eventually using 30W of 6500K PC over a 2.5 gallon with one CO2 bottle feeding into the intake of a Penguin Mini filter--with Biowheel removed of course. As far as plants go, you'll have to get small plants because anything else will rapidly outgrow the tank as they begin growing.
I'll watch this thread and give any more tips if I can.