Remove that tape right now! If you're at work, excuse yourself, go home, remove tape, go back to work. It's digging into the trunk and will take years to repair. The second immediate thing is to get that pot off the ground. The tree will grow into your lawn and all the interesting roots will be outside the pot, not in it.
Your tree appears to be only a few years old. As such, it's boring. Bald cypress trees are known for their girth at the soil line. Unless you're sticking this tree into a larger planting, it needs a little fattening up. Also, I have a hunch that if you uncovered the first 4-inches of the pot, you'd see a fist of roots. That's the side-effect of nurseries growing these trees for landscapes; ugly roots. But we can fix this tree and make it beautiful!
Your best bet is to invest 5-10 years in doing nothing. Here's what I do with saplings like yours:
Buy a restaurant bus tub. They're tough, they last, and they're deep. My local restaurant supply has them in 7-inch depths, but I found something there that are 9-inches deep.
Repot the tree. Wash out the roots and mix 50% inorganic (I use haydite) and 50% Miracle Gro potting soil. Your inorganic should be durable, like haydite or lavarock. Do not use crushed granite or any other non-absorbant material. Never use Akadama or any other material that is going to turn to mush when soaked in water for 5 years.
(Here in NOLA, I would repot it in January. Your mileage may vary, but I'm assuming it's too hot to do it now in "North Cuba.")
When you wash out the roots, look for the tap root. Cut an inch off the tap root or it will just grow and whip around the pot. You want more lateral roots off the main root. Don't have a tap root? Great!
Pot the tree so that the new soil line is at the current soil line.
Depth of your soil is your choice, but don't mound it higher than the top of the pot. You won't need more than an inch or two of water above the soil line at any time.
This is a top-heavy potting, so I put 12-inch concrete stepping stones on either side of the tree. What I SHOULD do is anchor the tree high on the trunk and wider than the pot; as if the tree was freshly planted in your yard. You could get away with anchoring the tree to your fence. If you're married, you might not get away with that.
Keep the pot filled with water.
Get insecticidal oil and dribble a few drops on the surface to kill mosquito larvae. You'll need to repeat this often. I keep several small bottles on my benches.
Feed it with weak mixtures of liquid fertilizer.
Leave it alone until you get the girth you desire. Should take 5-years or so to get a very impressive trunk.
The tree may end up root bound in the pot. This is not a bad thing.
Periodically, use Bayer Tree and Shrub Protect and Feed. It has a systemic insecticide called Merit.
During these years of flooding, NEVER CUT ON THE TREE. Not on the tips of branches and especially not on the trunk itself. This is a trunk-building technique. You might also get knees to appear.
What's happening:
Lenticels are responsible for gas-exchange within plants. Flooded bald cypress roots will utilize these to a greater extent. Even more so once the oxygen in the water is depleted. This utilization results in fatter roots and a fatter trunk base. If you can contact Bonsai Nut user markyscott, he might email you a copy of an article that supports this approach. The article is from BCI Magazine, Sept/Oct 1990. That fat trunk base is going to be gorgeous.
The BCI article only confirmed what I had already been taught and experienced.
An alternative to the restaurant tub is to take the tree you have, as is, and drop it in a 5-gallon bucked and leave it alone for a few years. Feed it weakly and use a few drops of insecticidal oil on the surface.
I have knees growing on a few of my bald cypress that did not have knees when I dug the trees. The trees were submerged year round and no work was being done on them. I'm currently doing an experiment on some other knee-generating techniques. One technique is to put holes in the bottom of the bus tub and set the tubs into a larger basin of water. Then in October, remove the tubs from the larger basin and keep them out until the end of February when I put them back under water.
You may notice roots looping out of the soil and diving back down. Some of your bonsai friends may try to convince you to pinch these roots into bobbypin-shaped "knees". These are not knees. They're ugly as sin. Any time I see these, I cringe. It's a cheat and it looks like a cheat.
Actual knees will start as a lump pushing its way up through the soil. If you pull away the soil, you notice that it is a thickening of one portion of the root (put the soil back). Knees can form close to the tree or out near the edge of the tub. A friend of mine counts 23 knees in his bonsai pot. He kept the tree flooded, root bound, and did no cutting on the tree.
But then, you might not get knees. It's a gamble to only have one bald cypress and hope for knees.
How much did you pay for the tree? I have no idea how much bald cypress saplings cost. I go in the swamps and tear them out by hand. You might want to go back and get a few more. More trees is a greater chance that one will grow knees.
