New Fresh Water tank

[A.G]

Hi all,
Am new to fresh water and I have been reading and learning as much as I could in the past few months,so here we go.My tank is 40gal with 40w(Hagen Aqua Glo)lighting and am gonna use ammonium chloride for cycling purpose
with no fish of of course .I have fluval with biological media(ceramic ring) and carbons.What do you think about my set up?
As for my tap water ,I did ph test and it was about 7-7.5 .I would like to keep ballon mollies , guppies and platies in this tank.I will add some green plants by tomorrow to add some nature look(Is it ok to add the plants while the tank is cycling). I saw the fish scrathing at the LFS so what do you think should I do ?should I QT them using copper(for how long)?or should I just add some salt into the main tank?Would you give me some easy grow plants?Should I add salt into my tank?At the LFS they don`t ?.Thank you.
A.G

 

[aquamanis]

Hi A.G, first off stay away from any LFS that has fish "scratching". Theres no need to bring their problems home. I,m sure you will source out a good clean healthy LFS nearby. Quarantining fish is always a good idea when introducing to the community but if its your first fish it dosen,t matter. Second, avoid salt where you can especially if you want to grow plants. Thirdly you will have to increase your light by at least another 40watts if you want decent plant growth. You can put plants in right from the start. Its actually a good idea for several reasons. One is they will get time to attach thier roots to the substrate before any fish can dig it up. Second they help absorb ammonia and nitrates from the water. Thirdly they help to oxygenate the water (good for the bacteria). And another reason is they will compete with algae for nutrients. I,m not sure about the ammonia you are going to use. Advocates of fishless cycling recomend using non perfumed pure ammonia from a supermarket. Shake the bottle to make sure it dosen,t foam, if it dosen,t it should be ok. Just make sure you read the ingrediants and see that it is pure ammonia. Some fast growing plants are hygrophilias, vallis, ludwigia and most of the sword varieties. Check the links at the top of "how does your garden grow" forum for some good plant sites. Hope this helps. BTW, welcome to the forum.