IMO this is a form of corruption. These problems wouldn't exist for you (or to a much lesser extent) if you were a big corporation instead of a single person trying to start a business. The fact that the state treats different people differently is discrimination. Unfortunately it's also reality. I worked for about 6 months to open a retail business on my own and one of the things that made me abandon the plan was bureaucracy.
These problems exist across the board because government, as a rule, is inefficient. Regulations do less to help anyone and do more to tax/burden/red-tape businesses to death. The government doesn't care if they're big or little.
Back years ago when I had a freshwater planted tank, I always preferred a tank full of one species, like the little goofy neon tetras. Put a whole lot (but no too much) in there, and with the beautiful plants and a bunch of one fish, looked so good. What was that guys name, Amaro or something? That is considered the god of planted tanks. He's Japanese or something.
I had to read this about 4x before I realized you didn't mean, "2000 years ago...", haha!
Yeah. They were called "Wonder Bulbs". They're bulbs just like bulbs for a garden. They are lilly species and apontogeton species. They are great, but it's hard for a store like me to get them in a package. I can order them outside of a package, but being in a package is what gets people to try them. I know Petsmart currently carries them. I will be trying to track them down, as I'm a big fan of lets see what you get when you put these in your tank things.
I can't believe you haven't opened yet. Most of the time, the city is so inefficient that they don't even notice you are open. I can think of two towns where we do business, that they have no idea if we are properly licensed or not. One town where we have our office and trucks located, they instituted business licenses but didn't tell anyone. It took them four years to come tell us that we didn't have one!