Attacked by a Tiger... help!

[otter]

OK, I bought this beautiful little red tiger lotus from the lfs about a month ago. It was an incredible standout in the otherwise really sorry plant selection. It had about five leaves, the biggest being about 1' wide and the whole thing was about 3" high. A week later I stuck a fert stick into the substrate under the roots because I read somewhere that these plants were major root feeders.
Now it pretty much consumes the entire center 1/3 of my 46g bow. The leaves are gi-normous, with the two largest being close to 12" from one tip to the other! Now all of a sudden it's decided to make a run for the surface. In a few days the stems grew at least 6+"! I want to let it flower bcause I've never had anything flower before. How long do the flowers last? How much clearance do I need at the top for the flowers? If I decide to trim it, where do I start? If I trim all of the tall stalks, there would be nothing left. Is it too late at this point to tame this plant?
Somewhere along the line another mini plant fell off the main plant when I first got it. It floated around for a week or two until I planted it. Now that one is taking off great too. How can I split more of these off of the main one so I can give some away?
I need a real detailed step-by-step on how to deal with these plants if possible (I'm very dumb about this stuff). Thanks!

[TheOtherGeoff]

it may be alittle late to tame it now. you could always cut it back and just keep on top of it and let it have a leaf or two shoot up. i am keeping ontop of mine cause it has made runs for the surface and hit them a few times aready. back in the day when i had one that covered about 80% the top of my 55 it flowered. took its jolly ole time to throw one out and it took like a week for the bud to open. considering it dopubled it leaf count in a week. O_o. anyway, the plant flowered and it hung out for a couple days then rotted away. it came out of my tank about 5" and when into my light fixture and then flowered from in there. i think to split them off you can take the plant off the bulb and put the bulb esle where and a plant hould grow from the bulb again. not 100% positive though

[aquamoon]

hi how are you...........
to clone this plant just remove the seed pod.........to trim the floters ...cut them about 1/4 to 1/2'' from the bottom.........no its not to late to tame , but it will take a little longer ....to bloom it needs to keep at least 3-6 floating leaves.......as far as the space it needs to bloom......they was a nother post a few days ago a bout this ..........if you need more info on this plant just drop me a p.m. and ill be more than happy to give you all the info that you will need for this plant to be happy.....................

no more dots at this time........