Flourite sometimes does make a mess. It's basically a rock made of clay, so the dust is clay dust, which has very fine particles which take a long time to settle out of the water. I didn't have any trouble with that when I used in pots in the old setup of my tank, but that's probably because I used so little of it. I have read of other people having problems with it as thier only substrate. I hope it will eventually settle down for you.
Funny thing is that many people think of soil + gravel as being a very messy substrate, but any soil I stir up when adding or removing plants settles back down in a few hours. Sounds like, if you're unlucky, some of the commerical substrates can be worse!
I don't have any experience with root tabs. Will you really need them for vals and crypts? They aren't very demanding plants. If you get swords, this is the sort of thing that would really benefit from the root tabs, I think. But then, I've got a few varieties of smallish to medium sized swords that are growing fine in a soil + gravel substrate wihtout any added ferts (in a tank with 2.4 WPG).
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