This is my first year to experience FA on my pond. This spring I got about a 3-4 ft line of it all around the 2 acre pond. Bright green in color but very ugly along the bank. Pond had been at full pool for quite sometime because of all the rains here in East Texas. Now the pond is dropping and has come down near a foot. Most of the FA has been left high and dry on the banks and has turned yellow. My question is...does it actually "die" once it goes dry or does it just go dormant until water comes back over it again? So should I try to "clean it up" while it is on dry land? Probably should know this but first time and just want to keep it controlled.

Flame,

FWIW...I think it dies but I pick it up anyway. I figure picking it up removes the nutrients that fueled it the first time around so they don't return to the pond when the water rises again. On my pond it will dry to a very fragile thin brown "shell" so I pick it up while it is still moist and easier to handle.

I found that a sharp pitchfork works well to pick up dried FA.

But, if your pond drops like mine does, and leaves bare clay, the retreating water will leave a hard coating of dried FA on the clay which prevents clay from eroding into your pond once a hard rain comes.

I also use a pitch fork for any I pull out. The trick is to get it mostly dried but not fully dried out. At the "right" moisture the pitch fork handles it like hay. But if it gets too dry it becomes brittle and breaks as well as attaches to everything it lays on like the rocks around the edge of my pond (pulling the rocks up with the FA). Handling it wet right as it comes out of the pond and it is REALLY heavy and a big job to load.

Here is an old thread with my FA experience (lots of pictures). Anything positive about FA?

I used a little Cutrine a couple times around the edge of my main pond this early spring and kept it to levels I am almost happy with. A slight ring around the edge of the pond but I don't mind a little for cover for new fish fry. My sediment pond is a different story. Having a high nutrient load it is about half covered right now. I have kind of let it go partly on purpose and partly just because other projects have been keeping me busy. If my main pond looked like it did I would be unhappy.

I bet it would be good in the compost pile

I put a bunch of mine in the compost pile last summer. It's slow to decompose and like a hard dry layer in there. I should have broken it into little pieces after it dried.

I used some of my FA as mulch in the garden last year and it did ok. The rest went into a compost pile along with everything else.

I rotate my compost piles every other year so I won't use last summer's pile until next spring. In the past, even the toughest stuff has time to decompose. It will be interesting to see if the FA does.

I mixed mine in a pile of old hay/cow manure I had cleaned up from around a hay feeder. It sat a couple years (and turned a few times) before I used it and the FA broke down nicely in that amount of time. Had some of the most huge grub worms in that pile I ever seen.

After the labor of pulling probably 1,000 pounds of it (damp) out of the first pond last year, I am letting it be this year. So far, it is not really bad, likely due to the murkier water. I need to grow some big Koi to keep it stirred up. LOL

I wonder where I could find an "otter eating" fish? Wels catfish, anybody?

One LARGE blue cat...maybe 50 lbs. But digesting one otter...now he's 54 lbs. Just guessing.

My otter was probably 35-40 pounds.

How much cutrine should be used?

Would a two gallon hand carried sprayer be adequate for a quarter acre pond with a four foot wide circle of FA around most of it?

Would I spray directly on the floating pads of FA?

Does it come in small concentrate bottles?

Thanks.

Yes a 2 gallon hand sprayer will work fine. That is what I use for perimeter spraying. I put about a pint of cutrine in a gallon of water and spray a 3' band out into the water. Once upon a time I did the calculations for area and rate. You should do that the first time to get close to the proper rate. After that you get a feel for it. It is pretty hard to get it exact. But you want to be in the ball park on rates. Read the label.

You can kill some of the floating mats, but in my opinion you are about two months late to start. It is kind of like killing weeds with Roundup. You can kill them easily when they are an inch high, or use much greater rates and kill the weeds when they are 6 feet high. You kill them in both cases, but in the latter case you have 6 feet of overgrowth to look at.

Same with FA. Start in March and control it when you see the first flush of green on the bottom of the pond. Then treat again every 3 weeks or so for a couple more times. For me this keeps it at bay enough I do not worry about it later during higher temps. Usually a good enough algae bloom happens by then and the FA is not much of an issue.

If you wait till you see floating mats, it is mostly just a revenge killing. Start early and get when it is young.

Buy a gallon. It will keep from year to year.

FWIW I hit the mats and stuff in two feet of water or less with the liquid. 10 ounces of Cutrine Plus per gallon of water and 1.5 to 2 ounces of surfactant. I stick the sprayer wand down in the water some as well to get it a little deeper. I use Cutrine plus granular on the bottom/deeper FA.

As Snrub said...get it early and stay after it before it explodes.

I hit my sediment pond with one shot of Cutrine liquid early then decided in this particular pond I did not mind having some FA so let it go for fish habitat. It is only a 1/10th acre pond and is for catching sediment before it gets to the main pond.

First picture is of the results of "letting it go". This is a VERY fertile pond.

Second picture is of my main pond showing some FA around the edges. It was treated lightly twice with Cutrine liquid around the edges and once with some granules in slightly deeper water. The amount of FA in the main pond I can live with. Had some rain lately and a really good algae bloom since these pictures were taken a while back so FA should not be a problem likely the rest of the summer.

John, Why don't you stock some Tilapia?

My current goal is I like to fish for BG. So the plan is to be somewhat LMB "heavy". Problem is the pond went the other way. I have excess BG and am light on LMB (which I am working on rectifying by raising 100 fingerling LMB in that sediment pond pictured with the FA).

So for me I just do not have the LMB to utilize the tilapia like a pond shooting for trophy or at least more oriented towards growing large LMB. So the tilipia would likely help with the FA control but then their utility would end there.

A couple years ago I did raise some tilipia in that sediment pond. But I got them as fingerlings so it was more for just an experiment rather than FA control. By the time the fish got big enough to spawn it was fall and they soon died off. I mostly did it as an experiment.

It is also not easy for me to source adult size tilipia at what I consider a reasonable cost. No local sources and by the time I get someone like you do deliver enough to do any good in a three acre pond they get to be pretty expensive. It was painful for me to pay for the SMB I got and there is hope for them living more than one year. In other words, the main problem is I am a cheap bugger.

I have been able to manage the FA pretty well to my satisfaction. As seen in the pictures the sediment pond got pretty bad, but that was really kind of on purpose. It does give a lot of cover for fish fry. And that pond is small and not one I have to look out out my back window. I actually find it kind of interesting to watch the fish around it, but I sure would not want my main pond looking that way. Had that one year and that was enough.