Hello all you green fingered Aquarists.
I would appreciate it if any of you would be able to answer the following
queries.

I'll explain my setup first:
Small tank -+ 40 Litres, about 10 Gallons. 1 x 10watt Flourescent and 1 x
Desklamp with a 60watt 350 Lumens blue globe. Small internal canister filter
with Co2 dispersing. Don't know what plants I have, here in South Africa LFS
employees are not very clued up on plants at all. I think 2 of them are
Anubias, 1 is a java fern and the rest (3 others) are grassy type plants.
25% water change weekly, with dechlorinator.

My queries a

1. When pruning is it best to cut at the base or top of the stem.

2. I don't have a test kit so am unable to test for nitrates, ammonia etc.
But I'm assuming that my Nitrates are at zero as the tank has been going for
about 3 weeks now and everything is growing damn well. No fish added just
yet. Will it be cool to add a glass of water or so from another tank that
has a number of fish in it to up the nitrates a tad? I am adding 5ml or so
of some Sera fertiliser once a week but it contains 0 Nitrates or
Phosphates.

3. I have noticed small ammounts of brown algae developing on the leaves of
the 2 Anubias, should I just leave it or maybe do a small water change /
prune leaves??? Should I add more plants, maybe the algae is forming cause I
don't have really fast growing plants.

Any Advice greatly appreciated. Everyone have a fantastic weekend.