Can I grow a carpet from seeds with inert substrate?

[UnityLover]

Everyone in the reviews use Planted tank substrate, but I'll use inert. Do I need to use root tabs even before water is in the tank?

 

[Wills]

Seeds are a risky way to do it some of them are not fully aquatic plants - they get so tall and then die off rather than spread and carpet etc. If you do use a sand substrate I'd pop in some root tabs to get the plants started - unless you already have fish in there and the sand substrate is somewhat mature in that sense as there will be nutrients from fish waste.

Wills