Teach me about plants please!

[Sdimatties]

I can't stand plastic plants so when I started this tank I wanted plants. Honestly, I didn't research and figured I could just buy a plant and stick it into the sand and that would be that. Now that I want more plants, I'm starting to read to see what will go with what I bought ( a melon sword) and I'm hearing about co2 and fertilizers and a whole bunch of stuff. My tank is a 20 gal tall and I'm using the stock lid until I figure out what to buy.
Any help would be great, thank you!

 

[Goldfish loach boy]

Well, different plants have different demands
Co2 helps plants grow a lot, but you can keep some plants without co2 like your melon sword, some plants are low-mid light, like your melon sword, some plants need root tabs and some need liquid ferts, your amazon sword needs root tabs, it all depends on the plant, I have a planted 29 gallon with amazon swords, water wisteria, Anubias nana, java fern, Marimo moss balls, and anacharis, I add liquid ferts and root tabs, I have sand as substrate

 

[Mebbid]

First to start out you need to pick a few types of plants that you like most.

Low light is kind of restrictive with the plant types you can keep but will be very low maintenance.

Medium light covers a really wide array of plants and doesn't take too much maintenance. It also isn't a very high cost.

With high light you can grow anything BUT there is a lot of maintenance to keep up with. Also, the lights are quite a bit more expensive. Plants will however grow much faster than if they were grown under different types of light.

With medium and high light it's a good idea to look at using both dry ferts and some source of carbon.

So I would say the first step is to take a look at which types of plants you want and then we can help guide you from there. Also, what size tank do you have?