Savanna

Any idea what's going on with my Java fern? The old growth is fine but every single new leaf is turning dark green and dying at the ends. Any new growth on my dwarf chain sword is also dying from the tips down. All of my anubias, crypts, and pogo. octopus are doing amazing. My nitrates are at 40 right now, pH is 7.8 and gh and kh are both between 120-180ppm according to the test strips I have. I'm new to planted tanks and watched what videos I can find but I'm still lost.

I had my original fry in a breeder box, but they were growing much slower and had way less color than the ones that were free swimming at the bottom of the tank (they were spawned after I moved the fish from the 10g to the 65g) so I ended up just dumping them out with the others. I'm a dummy and got a tall tank so it would be nearly impossible to net those microscopic fry from the bottom 😅

I tried telling myself I wasn't going to gravel vac with this tank because I wanted it to end up heavily planted and it would be fine, but seeing the snail poop and pieces of plants that have died off is driving me insane

Any advice on how to gravel vac without sucking up fry? I have several different stages of rasbora fry scattered along the bottom of my 65 gallon. I'd like to vacuum the substrate to clean up any leftover frozen baby brine shrimp stuck in there, but the tank is too tall for me to simultaneously vacuum while watching for fry from the side. It is a planted tank, but I only started it up a month ago so my plants aren't very big. What's the best way to go about cleaning the substrate, or should I just leave it?

I love my harlequin rasboras!