Plant growth At first they do not always grow quickly. They must first have an adjustment period, then new roots appear and growth accelerates. The best thing is to let them float for a few days on the surface of the water in the aquarium, this is where there is the most light to awake the roots growth.
 The maximum growth rate is obtained in new water, because there are still all the trace elements.

 what to do ? if Plants do not grow anymore, it may be that you have forgotten to change some part of the water.
 Adding a new water brings minerals, trace elements, and makes skyrocket the plant growth.
  I never used fertilizer in an aquarium.
 The aquarium water is often too charged in nitrates, nitrates that come from fish excrements and decaying plants.

 If plants don't have the right color, and the green leaves are yellow or the leaves which should be red are not, this may be due to a lack of light.
  After a certain time of operating, the light intensity of fluorescent tubes decreases. It is then necessary to increase the lighting time or change a fluorescent tube.
  At the beginning there are not many plants, so they are highly enlightened and grow very fast.
 After some time the vegetation has doubled in volume, so it is darker in the aquarium, and plants grow twice slower, it's normal.
  Therefore we must prune the plants that reach the top of the aquarium, it will give more light to the plants of the bottom as they often lack light.

 The pruning.
 Pruning consists in cutting plants, especially those that grow too much and make shadow to other plants.
 Cuttings.
 How to cut, prick out. For plant cuttings we cut the upper part of the plant and plant it next. We obtain more plants and above all more light.
  There are plants that require this cutting once per week.

 Algae In the first weeks of the startup of an aquarium, it forms naturally brown algae, this is normal, often on the glasses first .
 These algae will be gradually replaced by green algae, it is still normal, we have just to clean the glasses from time to time with a squeegee.

 Excessive algae After a few months if you have forgotten to do water changes (1/10 per week) nitrates accumulate too much, which slows the plant growth, but promotes the growth of algae which can quickly become invasive.
 They attach themselves to the plant and eventually suffocate them. This is where we must manually intervene. You peel the leaves one by one, by passing them between two fingers.
 And it is important to not forget to siphon the bottom after the algae scraping.

 Micro-algae  or phytoplankton. Sometimes there is an explosion of micro-algae in suspension, the water becomes all green and opaque.
  This happened to me in an aquarium without fish, in which I had stopped the air and light for 2 months .
  The micro-fauna (zooplankton) which was partially suffocated from the lack of oxygen, the micro-algae had reproduced so much that we could see no more in the aquarium.
  This was quickly resolved by restarting ventilation, zooplankton took over and in three days the water was clarified.