I decided to pot this little guy up in a larger pot for a while. I was seeing very poor percolation and yellowing leaf tips, leading me to believe some combination of root growth and soil compaction was causing my problem.here it is mid-repot and then happily sitting in its temporary home.
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Well done the bark is beautiful on this little guy
Good idea with the up-potting It wont skip a beat.
As I'm seeing your tree it would be a nice mame-size sumo style!
If its a style that interest you I would allow it to grow, as you do, while up potting and comb out the roots each time. Keep all the branches and leaves to allow especially the bottom branches to grow crazy. All the rest can be easily rebuilt so I would leave everything as is and let it grow.
A little advise for watering in this case with a compact soil mass like this, that hasn't been extensively worked on, you could tilt the pot at angle after watering to make sure water gets inside the root ball and not only on the top, side, bottom of the pot.
As for the yellow leaves you are seeing I wouldn't be too worried as they all seems to be second year leaves their could be a lot of reason for them to turn yellow.
In fact it is even a good thing to a point, a yellow leaf on a ficus will never become green again so remove as you see them reason being you want to create a ¨scar¨ so the tree has to react at the cut site and that could possibly trigger a dormant bud beside the leaves. Sometimes it work, sometimes it doesn't.
2 methods to take off the ¨becoming yellow leaves¨ They have to be taken off before they fall because the tree will have wasted resources to get rid of the leaves and it leave no ¨open scar¨ to activate cellular activity at that point.
-Scissors cut the leave while leaving the petiole, let the sap flow and do not interrupt the bleeding, the petiole will fall by itself but it humidity can be useful for the dormant bud at its base
-Take off by peeling the entire Petiole/leaf from the branches with your fingers but making sure you don't damage the dormant bud. This will create a ¨bigger¨ round scar on the branch forcing the tree to repair, cellular activity occur and chances are you will see a little branches coming out soon after.
Both methods works, but its not a 100% chance and you can use one or the other depending on the the condition of the tree, where is the leave (Old wood or second year branch) and reaction of your tree after.
