1st Time Planting

[Darkwynd]

I'm getting ready to do some rearranging of my tanks, and was thinking about branching out into live plants a little. My plan for my 20g is to end up with a dozen or so neon tetra, five cory cats, and one bristlenose pl*co (dubbed Big Daddy). I was thinking about adding some anacharis to give the tetra some cover that looks better than fake plants with minimum effort. My questions are:

1) Do I need to worry about BD tearing up the anacharis, or will he leave it alone?

2) I've been told anacharis doesn't need a lot of consideration to survive, i.e. I can pretty much just stick it in my PFS substrate and not worry about it. Is this true?

3) I need to change out my flourescent bulb anyway (it's about 2-1/2 years old), should I stick with a 50/50 like I currently have or switch to a plant bulb?

[Totenkampf]

my ancistrus doesnt harm any plants except for the occasional sword leaf, i am not sure about anarcharis tho because lots of critters love to eat it that wont normally touch other plants. it grow super easily either by weighting down or floating. when i did have it, i dont recall it growing roots. it is a super oxygenator so its great if you need that plus it grows very fast so it may keep ahead of being eaten.

i do not recommend a 50/50 for plants since there is opinion that actinic is not used by higher plants but may be used by algae. some people like the 500k bulbs but i like the 6500 - 6700k bulbs combined with the roseate (560nm?) bulbs. that gives a good mix of bluish and redish peaks while not too much green peaks which chlorophyll cannot use.

[AquaticAddict]

I dont think the BN would damage the anacharis. With pfs you may wanna bunch a few together with lead weights. You can also try some java fern its a very easy plant to care for as well. As for lighting since your buying a new bulb anyways I would stay in the 5000k-6700k range