Not really Kyle.
One of the main things to remember with a self filtered tank is not to over load it with fish.
The fish I had were very small. I didnt feed them,only topped the water off as needed. (evap.) They had plenty of foods living in the aquarium.
Adrinal is right.
Nature will do it's thing if you allow it to.
This means no scraping all the algae away- and no removing little "beasties".
Everything I did to/added to the tank came from the same spot. Fish/plants/mud/mire.
Mire is the slimy stuff in a pond/swamp. The wet soil.
There are loads of living things in it.
Mud is wet dirt.
I do not expect you to set up a Discus Aquarium like this. The risks are far too high for that much money to be lost. Unless you have a grasp on the natural world, try practicing with a ten gallon tank and some small cheap hardy fish. Test your water like you would any aquarium. You will probably fail quite a few times- but, that's to be expected.
If you look under a lake you will see some pretty nasty stuff.
But that nasty mud/mire/grime is needed to filter the water. I truly doubt a plant alone could filter an aquarium enough to really support fish life. It takes an army of "unseens" to do such a task.
HTH's!