Planted tank newbie

[Broski]

For 2 years I never really minded having fake plants in my tank, but two months ago I tried some live plants. I thought It would be simple, just submerge the roots into the substrate. It was pretty, for about a week when they started to wilt.

Doing some light research, I found most aquatic plants don't like gravel as a substrate but need sand or eco complete.

Is there any way I could plant some swords or wisteria with just the gravel, or will I need to put some eco complete underneath it.

My lighting is a giant coral life lamp, its 65watts and it says D10 on the bulbs.

 

[Freezekougra]

Determined on the type of plants and requirements
You can definitely grow stuff without sand or ecocomplete(floating plants don't even touch the substrate...)
Lighting requirements will be based on types of plants and height of tank(higher tanks need stronger lights)
You can try DIY substrate like mineralized top soil and cover the top with gravel or sand
Try dosing liquid ferts like seachem flourish for the water column or you can add root tabs/dry fert capsules for heavy root feeders like sword plants.

 

[a6715s]

I've grown wisteria in an Eclipse 6, gravel substrate, standard lighting and only root tabs for feeding. There was either a betta or a dwarf puffer and snails in the tank (only one fish at a time). This was a very short tank; the light was less than 8 inches from the young plants. Now, I have some in my 75 with sand over mineralized soil. It's growing very slowly (because I'm not consistent with my dosing) but what is there is healthy.

I had trouble with plants melting in the past, so when I set up the 75 I started with fewer, smaller plants. I cut taller stem plants into < 4 inch pieces then stripped off lower leaves so each plant only had 2-4. I thought some of my melting problems were due to an imbalance in leaf:root ratio and lack of ability to assimilate nutrients. [With few to no roots on the small plants, I thought the plant would only be able to feed a couple of leaves.] I also began dosing with 1/4 the recommended Flourish dose, increasing to a full dose over a few weeks. I had little to no melting, all plants survived, and no algae issues.
A