A nice big tank with some super fish!
As for the the plants, it's a mixed report that I'd give. For a start, I fear the substrate is too plain and too shallow. To get good growth you generally need a good 8 cm (about three inches) of depth, though this is argued over a bit, some folks recommending more, while others maintain less will do provided the quality of the substrate is good. In any case, I find 8 cm a good number to work around.
About half of this will be the bottom layer of something "nutritious". I get great results from nothing more expensive than pond soil. A bag of this stuff will cost about £5, and would do your entire tank if mixed 50/50 with gravel or silica sand. I like to put on top of this a gravel tidy. Again, you could buy something ready made from a pet shop, but plain green plastic mesh from the garden centre does the job wonderfully for very little money. Choose a weave that's fairly fine; you don't want the netting used to keep herons out of ponds, but something fine enough to keep the bottom layer in place, but coarse enough plant roots can penetrate it easily.
On top of the gravel tidy stick any rocks and bogwood you want, and this will hold everything in place. The good thing with having the "under layer" is that should any fish do any digging, they can't undermine the rocks, preventing slippage. I had to replace a 180-litre tank because a rock slipped down and cracked the bottom pane of glass! So it's a really good safety tip this.
Finally, top the gravel tidy with a few centimetres of sand or gravel as required. This will give your plants some extra depth to dig into, as well as helping to secure the rocks and bogwood in place.
Your plants came packed in rockwool, a greenish fibre with a slightly irritating texture. It's similar to the stuff used for loft insulation. You can indeed leave your plants packed in the stuff if you want, though it's easy enough to remove it from at least some plants without much bother. Either way, stick the plants into the substrate and leave them alone.
A notable exception here is Java fern, which is the plant in the fourth photo down from the top. It's an epiphyte and rots when stuck in the ground. It needs to be attached to bogwood or lava rock, and you can tie it into place using either cotton or (carefully) lead weight.
The last plant appears to be Spathiphyllum (peace lily) or something like that. It's not an aquatic plant and should be treated like a pot plant. It'll die kept underwater, and the brown edges to the leaves seem to suggest it's already starting to die. A good clue to non-aquatic plants is this: if the leaves stay up out of water, or if they have a glossy, waxy surface, they're terrestrial plants. Aquatic plants are usually floppy and their leaves collapse when pulled out of water.
Java ferns and hardy Cryptocoryne spp. (fifth photo) tend to do quite well under low levels of lighting, such as that provided by the standard aquarium hood with one or two T8 tubes. But most other plants need fairly strong lighting, and if you don't get the lighting right, you'll notice your plants slowly failing. Typically they become etiolated first; that is, they develop small leaves widely separated along the stems. Note that this refers to the new growth, not the older growth produced in the greenhouse by the plant breeder.
Feeding plants is best (and most cheaply) done by providing them with a good substrate to start with, and then just add drops to the water as needs be. Fertiliser pellets can be used, but they're hideously expensive for what they are. Contrary to myth, fish wastes aren't sufficient by themselves: in the wild things like iron come primarily from the soil, even if nitrate and phosphate will come from animals wastes and decay.
Cheers, Neale
PS. Plecs eat Amazon swords; this might explain the holes in your specimens!
. The plants came in pots with stuff at the bottom - holding all the roots and stems together I think, which I just planted straight into the sand. Do I need to remove the material that is holding the plants together? Do the plants need different food?
