Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants eurasion milfoil

what is the best obtain to get rid of this stuff?
It has taken over out 10 arce pond, the grass carp we put in aren't really helping.

what is the best obtain?
we are located just outside dallas, TX

thanks in advance

Again, the grass carp are not helping, and people wonder why I don't recommend them. Grass carp can and will just turn thier noses up at Eur Milfoil and eat anything else. Had a 6 acre pond, completely infested, top to bottom. Herbicide, remove material, repeat. Key is to get it right when it starts to emerge. This and Coontail are my toughest assignments. And they will completely take over a pond. If you have fish you care about do it in stages. Otherwise you risk a crash. I would be interested to see what affect Tilipia have on this horrid invasive plant.

A neighbor has used slow release Sonar with good long term results. Be sitting down when you look at the price tho!

When did you stock and grass carp, how many did you stock and do you feed your other fish?

The Lake Mower company is down here in San Marcos, TX. You may want to check them out. I can send you some info in a pm if you want.

Doesn't someone here sell a same ingrediant knock off for much less? The Lake Mower cuts through it pretty easy. However that stuff will reproduce off of fragments. If you have a full blown infestation it can be used to mow it and rake a majority of the material out. Either way you have to hit it with a herbicide when it is emerging for best long term results. And a lot of Eur Milfoil is free floating in mats. I'd use the Lake Rake just to get that out.

Greg Grimes does, not sure if there is a slow release variety or not though. If my duck weed starts to get bad this year, I am going to buy some from him. My bet... My duck weed will get bad!

Try this thread - there are several knock-offs but none are cheap. See Kelly pg 2.


http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=196090&fpart=1

How does aqua shade or other water dyes work on this stuff?

Close to ineffective. Unless you tint that water to block almost all sunlight, and you almost can't do that on shallow growth areas. Just a lot of money spent on a growth limiter. Even worse, it can eliminate some blooms that compete with it for nutrients.

Grass Carp eat around it.

Rake it out, remove the bulk of the mass out of the pond. Look for best, or most cost effective herbicide containing active ingrediant Diquat dibromide. I prefer that over Fluridone. Apply to kill fragments and emergent growth. Repeat.

Look at this for options AquaPlant.


http://aquaplant.tamu.edu/database/submerged_plants/eurasian_watermilfoil_mgmt.htm

Navigate (granular form) works well on eurasian milfoil.

Lots of states don't allow Navigate shipped in. Alaska, California, Conncecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Massachusetts, NH, NJ, NY, RI, Vermont and Washington. 2, 4-D special. You have to dump that stuff in, something like 200 lbs per acre. For this guy that would equate to one ton. Could I have one ton of Navigate please?

OMG i never realized the price for Sonar...they must mix the stuff in gold vats

by my calculations, it would be ~$6k for 10 acres

Navigate will work at much lower dosage rates than 200 lbs per acre on milfoil. We used to use 100 lbs per acre just where the milfoil was growing and had very good success. We treated 5-6 acres of a 10 acre pond leaving some weeds for fish habitat in the shallow end. I will say that at the lower dosage rate it will not have the same desired effect on coontail and if coontail is present it will eventually dominate the pond after several years of using Navigate. After that it is time to switch to Reward/Cutrine Plus to get rid of the coontail. If I had a choice I would take the milfoil over the coontail as the milfoil is much better fish habitat IMO.

Tewks, I would consider stocking more grass carp, either you have enough GC or you don't. There is usually no happy medium when using GC meaning there is either little noticable differenec in the pond vegetation or no pond vegetation left at all.

Can I have 1,000 pounds of 2 4-d please. Back in the day when we could actually use Navigate without a lawsuit or something worse you just could not get away with 100 lbs per acre, no matter how many times they said you could. Sometimes claims are not backed by results. This was one. But there are so many variables, including body of water integrity and infestation. Doubling the dosage usually overcame that.

And I could not agree more with the GC statement they usually eat everything, or you don't know they are there. Just wildly inconsistent. Maybe Tilipia since they can propagate in warm waters will eventually get ahead of it, if they eat it at all. I think cutting whatever is rooted, raking all the mass out and treating with slow release and repeating is still the most economical solution in a pond this size. Either that or drain it down and let the roots die off over a season of a dry and scorched Earth pond.

I would never pay that price for Sonar. Never. There are so many knockoffs for so much less I am surprised they sell any. But, when you have that name recognition it sells more than the actual active ingrediant. Advertising pays. Plus, do you think resellers make more from selling it or knockoffs?

If only the GC viewed milfoil as a primary food source. WA state has done research that shows GC can actually HELP milfoil spread since they will dine on other submerged plant species first, reducing competition. They only used GC for BOWs that are considered a general loss and everything needs to be eaten/destroyed.

Interesting researchers up there in WA...they actually did a preference study on GC. Hydrilla was not included but i imagine it would be pretty high up. This is from their website:

The relative preference rank for the 20 aquatic plants tested was as follows: Potamogeton crispus (curly leaf pondweed) = P. pectinatus (sago pondweed) > P. zosteriformes (flat-stemmed pondweed) > Chara spp.(muskgrasses) = Elodea canadensis (American waterweed) = thin-leaved pondweeds Potamogton spp. > Egeria densa (Brazilian elodea) (large fish only) > P. praelongus (white-stemmed pondweed) = Vallisneria americana (water celery) > Myriophyllum spicatum (Eurasian watermilfoil) > Ceratophyllum demersum (coontail) >Utricularia vulgaris (bladderwort) > Polygonium amphibium (water smartweed) > P. natans (floating leaved pondweed) > P. amplifolius (big leaf pondweed) > Brasenia schreberi (watershield) = Juncus sp.(rush) > Egeria densa (Brazilian elodea) (fingerling fish only) > Nymphaea sp. (fragrant waterlily) > Typha sp. (cattail) > Nuphar sp. (spatterdock).

Good luck getting gc to eat anything hard stemmed, like cattails or bulrushes. Then you look at different agencies and they have totally different results. Far from an exact science, more like a wing and a prayer. I think if you look at the overall ramifications of introducing the gc or Amur here in America, the downside would be the winner. Now Tilipia, that is a whole nother ballgame. Show this study to guy that started this thread and ask his opinion.

There's one other critter that likes submerged weeds. It was stocked in Wi. and this particular lake is almost barren of weeks. At night, as deep as I could see I would see roughly 1 per square foot. I have no idea where they went during the day. But, I don't recommend stocking it.

Rusty Crayfish.

We had excellent success using Navigate at 100 lbs per acre on Eurasian milfoil, maybe it was due to our water chemistry, pH, etc. We would treat one side of the pond and then wait two weeks to do the other side. The treatment was more effective when the water temps we 65 degrees or better. The milfoil used to grownall the way to the surface in 7-8ft of water or less and would cover 40-50% of the 10 acre pond.

One thing I will say is that treating the weeds does have a profound effect on the population balance of the fish. When the weeds disappear suddenly LMB become much more effective predators and they can out eat their food source. It waas not unusually to have a bunch of skinny LMB the following year after having a really effective weed treatment. My bass culling strategy was largely based on how effective the weed treatments were.

I had one pond with close to 95% infestation. Bottom to top, and then when water drewdown in Summer, mats so dense you could not throw a rock thru it. Totally unfishable. A bit deeper, 10 foot and smaller little over 5 acres. LMB were the skinniest I had ever seen and stunted. From long term exposure to this. After I eradicated it, fish immediately gained weight. The stunted LMB eventually gave way to a new crop of healthy fat fish. The population exploded to the point they are now stacked and require selective harvesting and supplemental food.

At first I had th entire pond to myself, people did not know fish were in there. Caught many in the 5 lb range, a 5 fish 30lb limit on morning. But never any day with over 25 total. Last year I set my record for that pond 60 lmb c and r, just goofing off. The removal of the milfoil had a profound effect in many ways. Mainly from opening up space and allowing better sight feeding. Reduced excess cover for forage. Made a weed choked pond open water for a much larger carrying capacity. Downside is now I rarely have the pond to myself. Residents flock to it to fish. Trespassers hear about it thru the grapevine, more and more of them every season. And the milfoil did keep the algae out. This season it is pretty bad.

There are or is a lot of groups wanting to ban 2, 4-D outright. Combine it with 2,4 5-T and you get Agent Orange. And then usually nasty contaminants like TCDD, dioxin. Put a dash of arsenic in and you have one of the most lethal herbicides ever made, Agent Purple. Sometimes 5X the dioxin as Orange. Look for the purple band on top of the drum. I personally think 2, 4-D based herbicides are on their way out.

But you are dead on about the effects of removing milfoil on the fish population. I really had no idea of the negative impact the stuff had on a LMB population until I got it out. Luckily that and coontail are pretty rare in my parts.