Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Help with FA!

We've owned our 1 acre pond for a little more than 6 months now. It's a very old mill pond and wasn't touched for 2 years before we bought the property. The algae was pretty bad when we moved in and the storm associated with hurricane Sandy washed most of it away last fall, but more than 50% of the surface was again covered by algae mats by late fall. In February, I started treating The pond with VitaStim Polar and installed an aeration system consisting of 2 9" diffusers spaced apart and driven by an Ecoplus 7 pump. The system "boils" pretty well, and we have worked our way up to 12 hours (6pm to 6am) per day of aeration. The pond is shallow, only 4-5 ft with lots of muck on the bottom. Well, at the rate it's growing, it will soon be 90% covered. I tried raking off about 10% of the surface Monday night and by Tuesday night it had filled in what I had removed. I have bales of barley straw to put in, but don't feel like putting this "preventative" tool to use until I get the huge amount of FA under some level of control. I was hoping to avoid copper, but should I start hitting patches of it with Cutrine Plus at this point? Water temp has hit the 60's this week. I'm just about at a loss and am hoping you folks can help me out. I have looked at archives and old posts, and it looks as if talapia would be a good solution, but they are illegal here in PA. Please help!

Hi SML,

Does this pic look familiar? My 2 acre pond was nearly covered in it when I first moved here last April and continued to spread.

I initially treated with Cutrine plus, small areas at a time. Then came the DW which covered the entire pond, let alone Coontail which was so thick I could barely row through the pond and using a trolling motor was out of the question. I've since treated with Fluridone for the DW and Coontail and added aeration. Also adding pond dye from the start due to water clarity.

As I've read where tadpoles eat FA, there were millions of them (bullfrogs, hence the name of my pond, Croakers Creek).
I don't know if they've kept the FA in-check or not but my pond is void of FA, weeds, and appears to have a good plankton bloom as the clarity now is 12" or less and darkish green in color, and I know this old pond is high in nutrients with my water test coming soon.

Pond dye if necessary to prevent the sun from penetrating the bottom, water test to determine nutrient levels and continued treatment of Cutrine plus?

The experts here are better to chime in on controlling the FA but the above is my experience, all of which came from the help of the great folks on PB!




This photo was just taken last week, there is hope!



Good luck to you SML!

PB Rocks!

Good stuff from Livinlivin. I'm disappointed you haven't received more feedback though.

SML8591,

The most effective way to eliminate or reduce this problem would be to drain and dredge the muck out. Not sure if that is an option though.

If you don't mind I have a few questions that will help myself and others give you some answers:

1.) Do you have lots of deciduous trees around the pond?

2.) Is there some kind of nutrient source of phosphorus such as a farm field, fertilizied lawn etc.?

Thanks, guys! I was starting to take the lack of responses personally!

Lovnlivin, mine looked even worse yesterday morning, as most of the mats were all connected. More than half of the pond was solidly covered and the rest looked like yours. We had a thunderstorm last night, and this morning it looked more like your photo, as the rain broke up the mats a bit and probably sunk some of it. I am going to introduce some dye to see if that helps.

Cecil, draining and dredging does not seem very feasible as the pond is mainly spring-fed. There are a few deciduous trees nearby (mostly 150+ year-old sycamores and some maples), but most are not close enough to drop many leaves into the pond. I think the larger problem is that the pond is spring fed, but also fed by runoff from a small stream which crosses a farm valley before it gets to the pond--lots of nutrients.

Thanks again for the replies!

Planning to stock a bunch of golden shiners and might apply to the state for a triploid grass carp permit and put a dozen of them in, too. Can't hurt, I guess.

I hate to say it but if the stream is an on going source of nutrients this will be problem that won't go away. Dye may help some but it won't have any effect on the FA that forms in less than 3 feet of water. Grass carp don't prefer algae unless there is nothing else but I doubt 12 fish will do much.

A treatment of aluminum sulfate would probably help by binding the phosphorus in the bottom but I would remove as much FA as you can first with a very shallow seine (12 inches).

FA left in the pond to decompose simply feeds the next crop of FA.

Actually it could. They might eat the only macrophytes you have that compete with the algae for nutrients.

If the stream is the source of nutrients would a silt pond be a viable option. Or some way to catch the silt/nutrients before they enter the pond?

Rocks, grasses, weeds, etc., something to "get in the way"?

Not to be the pessimist but it sounds like an uphill battle if you're unable to stop or slow down the source. Chemicals and treatments really start to add up, and not just in dollars and cents!

Be advised I am a total rookie, but I'm trying the
Cutrine Plus granules on one of my ponds.
Thus far I am very pleased with how well Cutrine Plus
has worked on the algae.

Someone told me a product called Navigate granules
works well on the troublesome aquatic plants like water milfoil, coontail, and spatterdock.

I may try it after some additional reading up.

Navigate does work on aquatic plants like milfoil so long as the water temps are warm enough. So does Reward (diquat) mixed with cutrine plus.

Actually, there is a small silt pond where the small stream is dammed, and there are grasses in and around the silt pond. The small stream only supplies water when the stream/silt pond is high enough that the water level reaches 2 pipes that feed into the big pond. This usually only occurs after rainfall. During dry weather the pond is spring fed only.

We had a decent amount of rain this past week, and I put in a gallon of Aquashade Thursday night and have been aerating 24 hrs/day since. The Aquashade is the perfect shade for my taste--a very dark blue that looks natural. After the rains knocked down a lot of the surface mats, the pond looks much better, and today's wind has blown much of the remaining mats to the east end, closer to the spillway. Today I will take the boards out of the weir and rake as much algae as I can over the spillway. As for the mats that are still scattered about the pond, I'm going to spray them with Cutrine Plus once the wind dies down, maybe tomorrow morning. My 4 bales of barley straw are going to be staked in today. I wish I would have taken "before" pictures because it was hideous last weekend, and already looks much better thanks mainly to Mother Nature along with the Aquashade.