Caring For Freshwater Plants

Hi! I had several questions on how to keep fresh water plants. I am new to the idea of real plant keeping and only know the basics. When keeping any freshwater aquarium plants what I've researched so far is this:
- plant them (that's a given)
- trim or remove any dead leaves or decaying plant matter
- add fertilizer tabs
- make sure they have enough light.

That is my basic understanding thus far. I am probably missing something so if you guys could add to my understanding that would be greatly appreciated!

Questions I have that would be nice to know:
- do plants need to be scrubbed every once and a while if algae grows on them?
- what is the best fertilizer?
- do plants do best in a certain substrate? (I have the normal gravel that's found at Walmart.)

I'm after smaller plants that are pretty easy to take care of but not ugly.

 

Actually not all aquarium plants need planting. Plants with rhizomes are better of tied to driftwood or rocks. For example java ferns and anubias.

For plants that feed from stem and leaves (stem and rhizome plants) its better to use liquid fertilizers that just go into water column.
For soil it only really maters for root feeders like sword plants and even those can go in basic sand+root tabs. Another consideration is the smaller plants will have easier time rooting in finer media then coarse gravel.
For smaller plants I like anubias nana, rotala rotundifolia (grows light green in low light set ups), java ferns, marimo moss balls and mosses (java, flame, christmass).

 

Thank you so much for answering my questions! It's good to know, but I decided today after seeing some of the stuff for plants and what they need that I'm not able to to a lot of that stuff. So I bought some soft artificial plants that will work for my fish. Thank you for your help anyway! I am still interested in getting live plants someday, I just can't right now.

 

Plants are easy in my opinion. Start small with a moss ball.

 

At the pet store I was in all the tanks with live plants in them were dirty and messy looking. I prefer a clean looking tank. I don't know. I'M NO EXPERT!!!!