New To Planted Tanks...looking For Advice

[RadaR]

Anything you dont view as normal, cut it off. I.e. the thin, damaged leaves. It takes less energy for a plant to make a new leaf than to heal an already existing one. The plant will bounce back with proper care.

Do I remove the entire leaf on the vals if damaged (which is most of them) or cut it off below the damage?

Apparently you can cut where you want as long as you use sharp scissors and give correct care afterwards

 

[mtv8dmarine]

Apparently you can cut where you want as long as you use sharp scissors and give correct care afterwards

Any idea what the "correct care" is? It's rather ambiguous to a noob. lol

 

[RadaR]

Enough micro nutrients, macro nutrients and carbon. (obviously those with less light don't need to worry so much about CO2 or macro nutrients)

 

[mtv8dmarine]

I think what I'm going to do instead of throwing the vals into complete shock by cutting too many leaves off at the rootball is I'll cut the worst ones off and trim some of the others while still leaving some intact.

One thing I'll mention and maybe someone can chime in if it's just my perception of if it's something real. A couple days after I have my tank planted it seems like I have a huge amount of micro bubbles in the water now. It makes my water look cloudy a bit and at first I thought it was leaking fert. tablets but upon closer inspection it's all little water bubbles. Does being planted produce all these tiny bubbles I'm witnessing?

Also, how do you keep your Vals from popping out of the substrate? It seems like my corys just uproot them and I find them floating. Should I use the lead strips to weight them down until they root?

 

[mtv8dmarine]

So it appears as though some of the top cut vals leaves are going brown throughout and some of the newly planted wentii leaves are turning a little yellow. I don't want to make sudden reactionary decisions about plants I added to the tank 3 days ago but I know yellow leaves means too little iron in the water. At what point should I be concerned with new plants? I am using fert. tabs. I don't have access to TPN+ and run a low light setup. If this continues how should I proceed? I can easily get iron tabs to dose in the substrate. Should I look at something else perhaps?

EDIT: I just dosed with iron for the yellowing leaves now and ordered some Flourish Excel online since I cannot get it locally. Is this the proper course of action?