Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry Another Analysis in. Help?

I'm hoping for help with a lake on our southern MO property that we manage for fishing. The lake is 11 acres with an avg depth of about 7ft. The deepest is 17ft. The water is very clear and we have dense growth of mostly milfoil with some coontail. The fish have been stunted because, according to the biologist, they can't find their prey in all of the vegetation. We want to get the vegetation under control and we're thinking about fertilizing to create cloudiness to inhibit photosynthesis, but wanted to get an analysis of our water chemistry first. Test was conducted at Univ of Missouri.

ph........8.25
hardness....57
Nitrate....(.074ppm)
phosphate..(.013ppm)
Calcium....(13.17ppm)
Magnesium..(5.87ppm)
Potassium..(.881ppm)
Sodium.....(.927ppm)
Zinc.......(.001ppm)
Copper.....(.002ppm)
cabonate...(0)
Bicarbonate.(121ppm)
Amonium....(.260ppm)

Can anybody give any recommendations for lime or fertilizer or anything else that might help? Thank you very much.

I'm struggling with my own project and making apples to apples comparisons to other lab's criteria.

All I can offer at this point is that I don't see alkalinity which I would think to be critical.

Doug, who is the Biologist? (Sounds like a State of MO person) What size classes/species are "stunted? If what is stunted, are Large Mouth Bass (LMB) in the 12-16 inch size, you most likely have a classic LMB over-population situation. If this is also the case, you will have few, or no Bluegill in the 3-5 inch size class.

LMB can find prey fish in clear water with vegetation. Many LMB would like this scenario for easier ambushing.

You could chemically knock back some of the heavy growth of Millfoil and Coontail. The decay could induce a more beneficial algae bloom and phytoplankton growth one the bound up nutrient is released. Adding fertilizer in an un-aerated, fairly shallow lake could be risky and cause a large scale fish kill when a stretch of cloudy weather comes along and kills it off, creating low dissolved oxygen levels.

Hesperus, with a hardness of 57, and the levels of calcium, magnesium, and bicarbonates, the total alkalinity level may not be listed, but I would bet it is very near that hardness level.

Just found out that the total alkalinity is 123 ppm if that helps.

The lake was shocked a couple years ago by Mo dept of Conservation Fisheries Biologists and I was in the boat with them. The report says, " Stunted bass and stunted bluegil. Both species were fairly skinny. Likely due to dense stands of milfoil. Redear are descent and bluegil growth could be good enough to produse 8 inch fish."

The recommendation was to "Control vegetation. Milfoil is extremely thick. Try to get down to 25% coverage. Can use grass carp up to 10 per acre if you can harvest them if they are eating too much vegetation. I would also use some chemical control. Treat algae first (copper sulfate) then Milfoil. Establish native plants to compete with milfoil."

We stocked grass carp two years ago at 10 per acre with no visible results yet. I also spread Navigate granular around boat docks and that works well, but only for a year and its expensive.

We are working on having a drawdown pipe put in so we can drop it about 6ft from Dec to Feb to freeze out the shallow vegetation. Since I've been on this website I've realized that that could open us up to more FA problems in areas that the milfoil has left.

We've had a few otters in the lake off and on since tha GC were added and it makes me wonder what our mortality rate is and how many we've had wash over the spillway during heavy rains.

Thanks for the help.