I would personally go without all the high tech stuff and go without co2 too with the budget you have. With a planted tank, the filtration isn't as critical an issue as a non planted tank. Brandon and myself prefer canister filters, but you could probably go with whatever you have if you have one. Hang on back filters are fine except for the fact that you have to pull the tank forward to fit them. Canister filters don't have that problem.

How big is your tank? Like I said, you can do fine with shop lights if you grow low light plants (which I suggest for your first planted tank) Let me know the size tank and I can suggest a shop light configuration that will work great. The fixtures I'm suggesting aren't meant to sit on something like the top of a tank, so you'll either need a hood to screw it up into, or you can do what I do and have a slightly less that aesthetically perfect look by just laying the fixture on top of the tank.

I grew gorgeous planted tanks with very little needed maintenance, and I even got away with doing less water changes as the plants will use up the nitrates. Nitrates are the main reason for regular water changes, and if the plants are using it up you can cut down on the frequency. You still need to do them as water will evaporate out over time and with only topping off you end up with other things like minerals, salts, and such increasing in concentration.

Planted tanks in my experience actually help greatly with the cycling of a fishtank. If you go low light, low tech, you'll have a super stable system and a beautiful tank to boot.

my tank is a 29 gallon, and what are soem examples of low light plants, my favourite are amazon swords and java ferns.

Amason sword is a low to moderate light plant, and java fern is low light. I'll look at your profile. It may take a few days for it to post, so a reminder wen it does may be helpful.

Addendum: Aunbias is my favorite Plant. It comes as nana (small) and Bartari (large). It grows in low light very well and can either be rooted into the gravel or tied to wood or rocks. When It's tied to something it will grow beautiful mangrove or orchid like roots.

The grass and a couple others are high light plants. I would go to www.plantgeek.com and look at some of their plants such as Anubias nana and Anubias bartari. See if you like how they look. If you want high light you can have success without co2 and a great example is www.nobobo.com. He doesn't use co2 and it's hard to top his tank, but he does use good high light aquarium lights that, as I said, not only cost a lot in the beginning. The bulbs are really expensive and need to be replaced after 8-10 months. The pics of my tank show what it looked like after I removed 90% of the leaves due to my introduction of brush algae from my stepfathers Koi pond, so it's kind of bare, but all the plants in there are med to low light.

If you only have a couple hundred to spend I think you may be under budget for something like Brandon's tank. He has co2 tanks, related equipment, expensive lights, and he uses ferts at a controlled rate that is enough to grow the plants, but not enough to grow algae.

One thing with co2 is that it makes the water acidic by converting to carbonic acid, and though you can reach a healthy acid/base balance, if the co2 goes off the pH will swing from something like 6.2 to 8.0 very quickly.

I was just suggesting a low cost low maintenance alternative to going ballistic as people with all the expensive and hard to manage set ups have. I've grown Amazon sword very well with shop lights, but if you want grass, microsword, and some other high light plants you'll need at least the expensive lights.