UGF for plants?

[underdog5004]

So, here's the scoop. I'm an employee at a small LPS, and I service around 38 tanks (water changes, medications, etc). My boss has designated one of the tanks as my project tank, where I can do w/e I want. I'm going to go with a planted tank. It's a 20G tank with 20(?) watts of flourescent light above it.

EDIT :: There are about 6 plants of various types (amazon swords, anacharis, plus some red twisty ones that I don't know anything about)

Here are some questions I have:

1. The tank has an UGF with a powerhead on top of the riser tube. Is a UGF recommended for planted tanks (I understand that HOB filters are more "in vogue" than UGF lately).

2. I have a CO2 generator that puts out probably a 30 bubble burst every 30 seconds, small bubbles from an airstone (silica, not limewood. I know about the gunk that builds up on it, etc). Right now I've got the powerheads output angled at the stream of bubbles, so that they get pushed around the tank and probably close to 60% dissolve before hitting the top of the water. Is there a better way/should I use a diffuser?

3. Substrate is flourite, which I understand is a slow-release fertilizer. Should I be using something different? I do almost daily water swaps with the feeder goldfish tank to get pure(r) water into the goldfish tank and nitrate-rich water into the planted tank. Is that ok as well?

Thank you so much for looking at this post, hope someone(s) can answer my questions!

Matthew

PS - I've got a 10G at home with some platys/mollies/guppies and a 5" gourami. CO2 generator basically the same as described above, about 2 bubbles per second. I also have a little anacharis garden in the same tank with 10 watts of flourescent light above it.

[jsoong]

UGF tends to get clogged with plant roots so are generally avoided in the planted tank. <You can get around that by having only non-rooting plants, I suppose ....>

You don't really have enough light for CO2 or ferts. At 1 wpg, you are into very low light plants & CO2 is prob. a waste. <You can find out how efficient your CO2 setup is by measuring how much is in the water ... measure KH & pH & calculate the CO2 content ..... With the PH, etc. I suspect that you won't have much CO2 in that tank.>