heh funny story.
looks like I'm not the only around with a -unfortunately in the Age of Eternal Stench- highly developed sense of smell and little tolerance for certain chemicals.
I too can be knocked out by strong chemical odours, as it is; I'm allergic to aromactic oils (breeze continue etc), extremely fine dust, chemically added odours in detergents, strong perfume etc. it's hell finding all those without smell chemicals added. it is there, but it takes searching.
anyway, back on topic: to each and everyone's own, if Hellocatfish likes the plastic plants, stick to them.
DON'T buy any live ones without doing a thorough job on the tank lighting.
live plant keeping = good light management!
often when people start having trouble with live plants there's a zillion suggestions about:
-adding CO2....wich I have never done, that's what fish do: add CO2
-add fertilizers...now if you like a gooy tank full of blue-greens and slimey bacteria, do just this. if you do not..... that's where fish poop comes in.
-change the substrate. well, in some cases (if you have marbles for example) this might do some good. but if you have moderately fine gravel or sand (as you should! it's a CATFISH tank here), substrate is just fine.
NO>
you want to keep live plants, you have to do a good light job. simple as that.
there are 3 factors chiming in at doing such:
#1: the right kind of bulbs, fluorescent tubes, whatchamacallits. office-lights or those warm white room bulbs are not going to do it. you need real honest-to-god aquarium bulbs/lights etc. Gro-Lux, Dennerle, Aqua-sun, Aquarelle, Sun-lite, etc etc etc
#2: you need plenty of it! I'd say at least 1-1,5 watts per floorspace of 10cm x 10 cm. 1-1,5 watt per 1 square decimeter. for the non metrical people; I hope someone good with numbers can recalculate it to square feet. numbers give me a headache.
and if you like plants such as Vallisneria, Echinodorus, Hydrilla, Zosterifolia, Eichornia azureus etc: make it minimum 2 watts per square decimeter floorplace.
if you have a tank higher than 2 feet waterdepth, go well over 2 watt! or try something else like HQL lights, the ones people use to grow certain plants with.
herbs, you know.
#3: it should be switched on
at least 10 hours a day and then I mean ALL the lights. the whole wattage. you want to dim the lights in the dusk or dawn hours? fine, but those dimmed lights are
outside the minimum day of 10 hours.
personally i'd say 12 hrs full light is even better. and outside that duration fiddle with "sun ups" and "sundowns" to your own delight.
with lightmanagement like this you should easily be able to grow Anubias, Cryptocoryne, Crinum, Nymphea lotus, Javaferns, Vallisneria gigantea and V neotropicalis, Bacopa, Hygrophila, Pistia stratoides, moss, Oakleaffern -Ceratopteris spp, Samolus, Echinodorus etc.
once the lighting is fixed I can tell you some more tricks to really boost it through the roof.
SG out
I feel self-conscious even asking. But inquiring minds want to know. I love my fish and I don't want to annoy or poison them. So far they've had a blast with everything I've put in to amuse them. 
