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most people end up getting the tanks with bright lighting and are amano balanced and the like, which is also very nice because things stay so bright and clean with a little added work and cost. I can tell you one piece of equipment I'd not be without and that is a uv sterilizer. its very possible to not use them, but they help amazingly in algae control (as they do as well in larger marine tanks, great device I've used) which is often a familiar phase during planted tank management and is more often than not the reason people who start planted tanks end up taking them down
my globe terrarium has natural algae control-age and light variance. the nutrient levels are always high, I have six inches of snail poop substrate on top of my red laterite planted substrate
so I control for the other variables.
the light is very high above the tank you can see, this makes for a bright canopy strike, then medium for inside the canopy on the tiny fern generations of about 10 genera, and then it filters down to dark when it hits the water, so no algae forms in this tank which is usually uncirculated. i only turn on the waterfall when showing it or something, the amount of roots, natural convections, and the fact it's old enough to have cycled all through sporulation of standards molds and fungi (egon from ghostbusters) means it's stable and will basically run indefinately.
the point of this rant is to say that whatever planted tank you get will go through changes in the first year or three that if you stick it out will streamline into permanent growth