I bought 3 bags of eco for my 20 gallon, only needed 2and 1/2! I originally set this tank up a while back with 1 bag of eco. I would have thought one bag of eco would do a ten gallon to, but when I emtied it to start my 20 I was amazed at how root bound the tank was. The eco was packed with plant roots right down to the bottom glass, no room to spare. I didn't have that many plants in it at the time and it was only set up for a few months. Root bound planting media means eventually having unhealthy plants. That goes for any plant, aquatic or not. I put in the extra eco this time to give the plants a little more breathing room, and hopefully they will stay healthier long term. It's hard enough to balance ferts and light, don't need substrate problems to! The link you sent is what I'm trying to create, only mine won't be as good as that one!! I really like the carpet effect with the rocks but will add a few choice stem plants to the mix, don't want it to look to sterile. Timeline will be interesting to watch maxwell1295, I'm learning to! It will depend alot on how much light I can hit this tank with without running into algea problems. You can put as much light on your tank as you want, just set up a sleeping bag beside it to add ferts round the clock as they bottom out and you are all set! I will put as much light on this baby as I can reasonably maintain, higher the better for the carpet I think. I have lots of lights just waiting to be fired up! It has 36 watts of CF on it now, we'll see how that does. Thanks for the comments, will keep you posted.
Glen.