Hi,
Initial planting and trimming can take some time but is worth it....
1. Take each bunch of plants and rinse under gentle running water while separating the stems in the bunch. This washes off any loose stems and leaves and some pests.
2. Remove the lower nodes of leaves and discard any bad stems or ends that are rotting. You want nice fresh strong BARE stems to root.
3. Poke a finger in the substrate and then place one or two stems in each hole and gently push substrate around the stem. Make sure the stem is in the substrate at least an inch or more....that is why we remove the lower leaves to have bare stems in the substrate so the leaves will not rot.
4. Place each set of stems a bit apart based on eventual growth patterns. Usually the taller stems in back sloping towards the front, or the taller in the middle surrounded by smaller ones..
Or just trim them all the same length to start....
Make the dosing of ferts easy to start with and ignore the ppm levels if you want. Don't make it more complex than necessary. I have read the calculators, but have never used them.
Since our tanks are the same size more or less, here is my dosing and maintenance routine:
3 times per week I take 2-3 teaspoons of KNO3 and mix it in a large cup of water to dissolve it. I than just dump the cup of water in the tank.
3 times per week I take 2 teaspoons of K2S04 and mix it the same way.
These are the MACRO ferts and they are dosed on Sun, Tues, and Thursday.
3 times per week I take 30 mls of Tropica plant nutrition and just dump it in the tank.
These are the MICRO ferts and are dosed on Mon, Wed, and Fri.
Saturday is look at the tank day
Sunday I change about 70-80% of the water in the tank, clean glass, trim, etc. I can add gh booster and excel at this time based on what I am doing....
DOSE AFTER THE WATER CHANGE
That is it basically. I do not measure or care about the ppm in my tank of each nutrient. I do adjust by 1/4-1/2 tsp as needed.
I use the health of the plants, fish, and overall tank conditions to let me know if something is off but within that range.
Or sometimes I dose daily to experiment and simply add all dosing and divide by 7 to get the daily dose..
I dose heavier as I remove a lot of water weekly and my tank is well planted...
I now use much lower light levels to control growth and prune less.
Hope this helps.