According to Sean's tutorial for tropical plants in Dixie cups you can leave something like 3 or so pads and its sufficient for the tropical lily to still grow and bloom, allowing you to fit many tropicals in a small pond or space.
How many pads can you leave on a hardy to produce the same effect? I don't have a lot of space as my ponds are container ponds or 100 gal stock tanks, so I find it hard to keep hardies as they take up a lot of pot space on the bottom of the small container ponds/ stock tanks due to they grow horizontally in the pot (needs bigger pot than a dixie cup). This one hardy in particular that I have has an enormous spread and huge pads to rival a tropical lily, and I would like to remove a lot of pads on it down to 3 if it won't kill it or prevent it from blooming. Does anyone know if I can do this?