i had the exact same situation as you did, i had fake plants all my fish keeping life and just got to hating them with a passion. I didnt want to go "all out" with high light, since most of the fish i have would hate high light, and i didnt want expensive co2. So i started off with just Java fern. that stuff is indestructable, i have around 1.1 watts of light per gallon and the stuff grows like mad. after a while i added some Anubias. same thing, it grows slow, but is also indestructable. this was all without fertilizer or co2. by the way im talking about a 75 gallon aquarium. after this i added just one bottle of DIY co2 to the tank, and started using flourish excel and regular flourish. with that i added some bannana plants, along with some creaping jenny, both of which are supposed to need more light but ive had them for around 4 months now and they are growing great, putting out new leaves and everything. anyway, thats my experience with low light, low tech planted tank. I always stayed away from live plants cause it seemed so hard, but as long as you carefully chose the plants you buy for your tank, its actually really easy
