Hey all will grass carp eat Chara? Is that an easy plant to get established in a lake? We have lots in Minnesota we call it skunk weed up there. Thanks

It's not a plant, and it's not on their "preferred food list" of things to eat...

I'm not disagreeing with you Scott. At all. I personally don't know anything about taxonomy of algae. But you got me curious, so I googled it. Tis amazing the variety of opinions, and it seems there has been some change in classification. I tried to go to more scholarly sites as I have told my kids many times not to be citing Wikipedia to me.

So it seems the current thought is algae are truly not plants. Though they admit that they are the predecessors of plants and I can't quite figure out how a predecessor is not in the kingdom. Then I went to TAMU.
http://aquaplant.tamu.edu/plant-identification/alphabetical-index/planktonic-algae/
"Planktonic algae are floating microscope plants that are normal and essential inhabitants of sunlit surface waters."

I agree with you - I don't know how/where/why the line is drawn between plants and algae.

When it comes to treating plants and algae with "chemicals", typically algae is controlled with copper based products, while vascular plants need different products, depending on the target plant, with the exception of a few herbicides - i.e. Fluridone is one that I know is pretty "generic".

Let me help. I think Scott meant that Chara is not a rooted plant, aka macrophyte or aquatic vascular plant. Technically Chara is an alga. Algae to me are plants. Some define plant in various ways. For me if it has chlorophyll and makes its own food, it is a plant versus an animal that does not make its own food and has to eat/consume usually plants or other animals. There are in-between or combination life forms such as mushrooms and some simple organisms that have chlorophyll and consume solid particles such as bacteria & organic detritus.

I have seen good control of Chara using grass carp. The GC should be young and sometimes higher numbers per acre to get Chara controlled or eliminated. Chara competes against algae, thus it is not good to eliminate all of it. Tilapia will also eat Chara. Proper numbers of them (density) are important for algae/Chara control.

I'm asking this to find out if there is some plant those stupid Grass Carp won't eat. I would take Chara over nothing at all..............

GC don't like FA.

But, if they eat all the other plants, it's either eat whatever is left that they don't like or starve.

In a .2 acre cell used for YP growout, I stocked 2 GC in hopes I'd manage the vegetation. They eliminated all rooted vegetation first, but when draining and seining I did discover that 2 18" GC had grazed a circular pattern equating to about 50% of the Chara. I was pretty happy with the results - imagine 1 more GC would have probably come close to completely knocking it out. This was the first evidence I'd personally seen of GC targeting algae of any kind as forage - thought I should share this.

TJ mine do the same with the chara. when the sun shines on my pond you can see all this chara and then you will also see like 4 foot round holes where everything is gone. They will eat it but like I said they eat my A. Pond Weed first and then try to eat my fish food! LOL

RC

Like Esshup said tho if there is nothing left for them to eat they will eat it!