ConfusedWoodElf
Seedling
This is my very first tree, so forgive any stupid questions!
After a lot of searching and waiting, a garden center near-ish to me finally got a shipment of bonsai in. The selection wasn't huge, but I'm still pretty happy with this microcarpa. I dumped off a lot of the extra fertilizer that was just sitting on top, trimmed off a couple leaves that had insect galls, watered it, and cleaned up the roots a little bit, but other than that I'm not sure what else I should be doing after bringing it home. I've got it under a full spectrum light (too cold to put it near the windows) with a fan blowing humid air from over my 36 gal aquarium onto it.
It looks pretty healthy to me, but is there anything my inexperienced eyes aren't seeing? I will note three areas of possible concern: some of the leaves have small brown spots (inconsequential insect damage?), some of the leaves have a dusty, almost limy (as from hard water) film on them, and there are localized areas of pretty chunky fungal growth in the soil. I even found some tiny, dead mushrooms, which was kind of fun I suppose. Should I be concerned about any of those? Is there anything else I should be doing? I have not taken a look at the root ball yet. I figured I could do that when I repot? And for that matter, when should I be repotting? I know the general advice is spring but things get a bit hazy when you're growing stuff indoors...
The entire specimen:

Other side:

Brown spots:

Dusty/limy film. Many of the older leaves have this on the underside too, just in a thinner layer. This is a dramatic example for clarity:

Apparent fungal growth (+ algae):

When I repot, it's going into a roughly equal-sized pot (gonna let it grow crazy for a while before I start really working it, so no bonsai pot yet).
I had been hoping for something that hadn't been trained at all or only very minimally. But again, there weren't a WHOLE ton of options. In fact they really only had, uh... four Ficus within my budget. But this one spoke to me the most. I can identify a couple branches that could make good leaders in the future, and it has the start of, at the very least, a not-boring nebari lol. But the first step is keeping the dang thing alive! So I want to try and catch any issues as soon as possible.
After a lot of searching and waiting, a garden center near-ish to me finally got a shipment of bonsai in. The selection wasn't huge, but I'm still pretty happy with this microcarpa. I dumped off a lot of the extra fertilizer that was just sitting on top, trimmed off a couple leaves that had insect galls, watered it, and cleaned up the roots a little bit, but other than that I'm not sure what else I should be doing after bringing it home. I've got it under a full spectrum light (too cold to put it near the windows) with a fan blowing humid air from over my 36 gal aquarium onto it.
It looks pretty healthy to me, but is there anything my inexperienced eyes aren't seeing? I will note three areas of possible concern: some of the leaves have small brown spots (inconsequential insect damage?), some of the leaves have a dusty, almost limy (as from hard water) film on them, and there are localized areas of pretty chunky fungal growth in the soil. I even found some tiny, dead mushrooms, which was kind of fun I suppose. Should I be concerned about any of those? Is there anything else I should be doing? I have not taken a look at the root ball yet. I figured I could do that when I repot? And for that matter, when should I be repotting? I know the general advice is spring but things get a bit hazy when you're growing stuff indoors...
The entire specimen:

Other side:

Brown spots:

Dusty/limy film. Many of the older leaves have this on the underside too, just in a thinner layer. This is a dramatic example for clarity:

Apparent fungal growth (+ algae):

When I repot, it's going into a roughly equal-sized pot (gonna let it grow crazy for a while before I start really working it, so no bonsai pot yet).
I had been hoping for something that hadn't been trained at all or only very minimally. But again, there weren't a WHOLE ton of options. In fact they really only had, uh... four Ficus within my budget. But this one spoke to me the most. I can identify a couple branches that could make good leaders in the future, and it has the start of, at the very least, a not-boring nebari lol. But the first step is keeping the dang thing alive! So I want to try and catch any issues as soon as possible.
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