For a planted tank, I would Go with GOD's system. Use a Base of Miracle Grow ORGANIC potting soil, Mixed with some Miracle Grow ORGANIC TOPsoil, buy some clay at your local Hobby Lobby and take a cheese grater to it, and mix it all up well. This is your base layer, I even added a tablespoon of steel shavings from under my grinder in the garage for iron, and mixed it in too. then make your landscape with this mix as your base. Then Rocks, wood, decore. Then add a good inch or two of sand. Any type, as long as it's sand, playsand works, but real river sand works best.(the kind on river bottoms). Then add plants, poking the roots deep into the sand. Then fill so carefully as to not disturb the sand at all, and the sand will trap the soil beneath it, and your plants will live off the soil the natural way for a very long time. Don't worry about the "Gases" the sand traps, cuz it's natural, and the bubbles would have to actually hit the fish to actually maybe harm it. Then try to strip every nutrient possible out of the water by filtration and an algae scrubber to combat algae growth. If you can add co2 then do so. if you don't want to then add air. lots of air. this will increase the exchange of the co2 in the surrounding air with the water. If you add co2, make sure you add it after the algae scrubber, and do not add and airstone except for at night. you want as little surface agitation as possible during the day if you are injecting co2, cuz surface agitation will release the co2 from the water back into the air. Hope this helps.
i used earthworm castings a product of vermiculture here, mixed with ready to use garden compost, and layered with fine gravel, as for the lighting requirement i dont have any suggestions, im with outdoor tanks 