Prep before you plant
New plants often arrive in rockwool pots or as tissue-culture cups. Gently free the roots from the pot, tease away as much rockwool as you can, and rinse tissue-culture gel off under a slow tap. Then inspect and tidy each plant: pull off any yellow, mushy or dead leaves, and trim long straggly roots back to roughly 2–3 cm. Shorter roots push into the substrate far more easily and grow back fresh once the plant settles. It also pays to have your hardscape and substrate contoured before you start, so you plant into the final layout rather than uprooting things later to move a rock.
Choosing beginner-friendly species stacks the odds in your favour — see the easiest plants for beginners before you buy. The fertilizers hub and substrate hub cover what feeds them.
The tool that changes everything: tweezers
Fingers compress substrate and drag plants back out as you withdraw them. A pair of long aquascaping tweezers lets you grip a plant just above the roots, drive it into the substrate at a slight angle, and slide the tweezers out sideways, leaving the plant anchored. It is the difference between plants that stay put and a tank full of floating escapees the next morning. Work with the tank filled only a few centimetres — enough to keep plants damp, shallow enough to see and reach.
Bury the crown — but never the rhizome
This is the rule that trips up most beginners, because different plants want opposite things:
- Rooted plants (crypts, Amazon swords, most stem plants): bury the roots fully and set the plant so the crown — the point where leaves meet roots — sits right at the substrate surface. Too shallow and it lifts out; too deep and the crown rots.
- Rhizome plants (anubias, java fern): the thick horizontal stem is the rhizome, and it must stay above the substrate. Bury it and it will rot and die. Instead, tie or glue these to a rock or piece of wood and let the roots grip the hardscape.
- Bulbs and rhizomatous lilies: leave the top of the bulb just proud of the substrate.
- Carpeting plants: split the pot into small clumps and dot them across the front — they spread to fill the gaps.
Feeding roots: when to use root tabs
Heavy root-feeders — swords, crypts and bulb plants — pull most of their food from the substrate. In a nutrient-rich planted-tank aqua soil they are well supplied for a year or more. In inert gravel or sand, they need help: push a root tab into the substrate near the roots every few weeks. Water-column feeders like anubias, java fern and stem plants take their nutrients from the water instead, via a liquid all-in-one fertiliser — many tanks benefit from both.
The first few weeks
Do not panic if new plants drop leaves or "melt" back at first — this is normal as they convert from their grown-above-water form to underwater growth, and fresh submerged leaves follow. Give them a sensible light photoperiod of 6–8 hours on a timer, keep up with fertilising, and resist the urge to keep replanting things that drift. Once roots take hold the tank settles fast. For the wider picture on layout and hardscape, our aquascaping for beginners guide ties it all together.