In article ,
om says...
I was planning on sticking with artificial plants this time around,
since I'm re-learning how to take care of an aquarium since it was so
long ago. So, that's good news, thanks for the info!

You might want to reconsider. Real plants do quite a good job of eating
up the ammonia-nitrite-nitrate byproducts of the fish and not only keep
the tank healthier, they may prevent or at least lessen algae.

And as another beginner, I found that they're not hard to grow. In
fact, I recently pulled up a big double handful of pygmy chain sword
plants because they had completely covered the bottom.

--
Homo sapiens is a goal, not a description