Last night I watched a demonstration of planting a new tank, and learned a lot. This demonstrated to me that there is a lot that I still don' t know about planted tanks. One comment made last night was about trimming a planting of Rotala rotundifolia to form a nice round bush. Sounds simple.

Let's say I plant a dozen stems of that plant, spaced about 2 cm apart, each stem around 4 inches long. In a week they will grow bigger. And, let's say I want my round bush to end up being about 3/4 of the tank height tall. When do I first start shaping? At what height do I first cut the plantlets to? (If they are cut to 3/4 of the tank depth they will immediately grow taller, leaving me to cut back all of the new growth.) For sustaining the shape and height of my round bush, how do I prune?

My experience with this plant is that it will be difficult to keep it to a round ball shape, since it will grow wider, taller, and it will try to grow in any direction it can go. So, what is the general plan of attack to keep it to the size I want?