Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Lily Pads Have Taken Over

Hello..New to forum and would appreciate any advice!! We purchased a home with a small (approx 1/4-1/2 acre) stocked pond winter time 10 years ago. The lily pads that popped up the spring were a surprise but not overly concerning...little did we know!! Of course, now each year they get more and more dense, and are at this point completely covering the pond during high summer. They are yellow lily pads..spatterdock I believe. Over the years we have gotten advice from the DNR and forestry commission without much luck..one recommended grass carp, which we tried, and the other a topical aquatic herbicide that my particular lily pads appeared to laugh at as they continued to spread. This year I started to research eliminating them and thankfully ran across this forum...I am thinking that I should try one of the glyphosate solutions like aquapro with cide kick surfacant. Has anyone had luck with this? Also, I am in Georgia, so they are just starting to rear their nasty heads again...should I start to apply now?

tyan, here is what works in our Ohio Ponds for spadderdock (cow lily)AS a preventitave strike I prefer Fludidone at 90 ppb or in most water depths less than 8 average 1 qt per acre.Then hit any escapes with Aquatic 24-d like Weedar 64 and Aquatic Gly with a non ionic surfactant.This mixture works well.Coverage and rate being key.If you have lots of them use caution with the 24d and Gly approach and be sure to only do 20-25 % at a time without aeration.With Fluridone the kill is slower (but probably just as complete) Be aware of all the water use restriction for all of these products.You might consider calling a pro such as Greg Grimes who probably works your area.Find him in the "Resource Guide"

Thank You!!! Water depth is 9 ft at its deepest, and we do have a lot of them.....pretty much totally covered during the summer...pond is more like a bog during that time. I have read about the Flourodone type products so will research them further for sure...any advise on the application time? I seem to find conflicting info on this particular subject as far as waiting until they have all surfaced and are in bloom verses applying as they crop up in the spring...

Welcome to the forum!

If you were going to go the Fluridone route, I'd apply it now. Fluridone will kill all the plants in the pond, and it really, really works well when applied correctly. It takes 60-90 days to work, so it'd be in the pond when the plants are growing. I hope Kelly will chime in here, he's the plant guru. My take on it is that the plants would die before they completely covered the pond, and that there would be less decaying organic material, which would use less Oxygen.

PM sent.

I have no experience with this, but my common sense approach would say that plants are taking on more nutrients when they are actively growing than when they are mature. Thus they would take up the plant killer better right now.

Wow I was just researching a little further into the fluridone products...they are quite expensive!! I guess I am going to have to stay with the glyphosate/side kick type combo just to stay within budget. Fish n chips I think has a very plausible theory for application time..makes sense, and maybe like esshup says, if I start on it now a little at a time the decaying material won't cause harm to the fish

Hi Tyan. If you are using Aquapro (and i believe this also applies to other aquatic glyphosates) the label recommends waiting until the plants have matured and most of the plants are flowering before treatment. Here in IL that seems to occur in July/Aug from what I've seen. I have had great success using Aquapro and Cidekick in treating American Lotus plants late in the summer. To reduce the risk of a fish kill, if a pond is heavily covered, I usually treat 25%-33% of the pond every 2 weeks. When using Aquapro and waiting until the plants are flowering I see very few plants return the following year. Also make sure your sprayer doesnt have so much pressure that the droplets are pushed off of the surface of the leaves.

If you wanted a cheaper than flurodine early season chemical I saw that Navigate lists spatterdock on the label BUT it does say it is "slighly to moderately resistant" to the chemical. I haven't personally tried it but it may be an option. I would contact the company to see what they mean by "slightly to moderately resistant" first though. Hopefully Kelly will be able to give some input on this.

Hi Tyan.
"Browning out" the spatterdock's lily pads isn't a huge challenge.
Controlling spatterdock roots (tubers) is a different story.

I've had relatively few encounters with spatterdock; so my comments are mostly speculation in respect to this species.
I suspect that glyphosate-based products will offer reasonably decent brown-out of exposed/treated spatterdock pads; but may not provide satisfactory control of the tubors that are buried in the hydro soil.
For topical pad-treatments, I think an imazapyr-type herbicide would offer better odds of yielding greater impact on spatterdock roots. Either way, repetitive treatments will likely be necessary as new pads reach the surface (which were not contacted by a previous treatment).
Use a quality methylated seed-oil (MSO) surfactant for better adhesion to and penetration of treated pad-surfaces. This is critical, since the pads of all lily-species tend to shed spray-droplets quite readily - unless the proper adjuvant is utilized.
Personally, I would attack this type of weed infestation more aggressively that I would a fully submerged species (such as coontail), or algae infestations. In other works, I probably wouldn't follow the old rule-of-thumb to treat only 1/3 of the pond at a time. Spatterdock is a comparatively fibrous plant that decomposes more slowly than algae or fleshy submerged plants. I’ve never heard of a fish-kill related to DO crashes behind a lily treatment; although I suppose it is possible. From a DO standpoint, I’m more concerned about aggressive algae treatments, since this simple organism dies and decomposes quite rapidly - and the “bugs” (microbes) that digest (decompose) the dead algae use vast amounts of oxygen during the process – and are also much more prone to accelerated population-spikes due to the shear amount of readily available nutrients.
Although dead lily species also decompose through microbial means, they’re relative biomass is nowhere near that of a submerged weed-infestation (coontail, Hydrilla, milfoil, etc). Therefore, in most scenarios I’ve encountered, dead lilies don’t appear to support the level of microbial activity that threaten a DO-crash. If someone has experienced otherwise, I’m all ears….

This is my year to kill off some of my spatterdock. I've enjoyed them over the years but their too thick now. I didn't like the high prices I was seeing for the chemicals to kill spatterdock and cattail. The main ingredient was 41% glyphosate, and that is in Eliminator, $8 concentrate makes 10 gallon at Walmart. What was missing was a succulent so I used Walmarts Great Value rinse agent for dishwashers, $4. I made a strong mix of this and tried it on a few spatterdock and cattails last year and it worked ok. I sprayed at my deck where I could observe any new growth from the plants I sprayed, and didn't see any. I'm also mixing in blue marking dye to mark only the ones I want to kill. My spatterdock are just starting to come up so I plan to spot spray them from my boat as they come to the surface.

Kelly, have you had any luck with Navigate Granular for Spatterdock or American Lotus removal?

The reason I ask is in 2011 we had some dirt work done, and I specifically had the guy remove 2' of soil in the area where we had AL. Up until that point, I had sprayed Rodeo and spread Navigate Granular, and I'm not sure at this time which thing I did actually finally got rid of it.

The timing was such that I'm not sure which thing I did kept the spread at bay. Either way, the AL has not yet returned but I'm watching that area closely.

As always, thanks for the great info.

@John: Are you sure the "Eliminator" that you used is 41% glyphosate and labeled/intended for aquatic-use? I've never heard of it, and the product-info that I located described a completely different herbicide formulation..... ELIMINATOR HERBICIDE
Can you post a link to the product-label that you used?

@FireIsHot: I suspect the soil-removal process likely removed most if not all of the AL roots and seeds. Time will tell. Your herbicide treatments were probably also beneficial - but, it usually takes repetitive herbicide treatments to exhaust AL seed-banks.

Thanks Kelly, those were my guesstimates also. It got so bad I carried a backpack sprayer with Rodeo and a pair of shears for seed head removal with me every time I fished.

I guess at least the 2011 drought was good for one thing.

Kelly I did the searches for the ingredients of Eliminator a year ago and compared them to aqua safe herbicides and they always come up listed the same way, glyphosate 41%, other ingredients 59%. Other ingredients were never spelled out. Then it was mentioned that what made it an aqua herbicide was the addition of a surfactant
so I added the dish washer surfactant. So then we are worried about killing our fish. My deck has dozens of minnows swimming around it and the area I sprayed. The minnows were coming up into the bubbles and residue from some of the spray, so for the next week I watched very carefully to see if any minnows were dieing and I didn't see any. And I have lots of tadpole and skin sensitive frogs and I didn't see any problems with them either. I will start the big spray in the next few days but I don't expect any thing different.

The "other ingredients" in the referenced glyphosate product are precisely what make it inappropriate for aquatic use.
Most terrestrial glyphosate formulations contain tallow-amine surfactants - which should never be used in aquatic sites, ever!
If you feel that the casual observation of minnows not dying after such uses is adequate to rationalize the misuse of a pesticide, that's your business. However, I would caution that there's a little more to it than simply 'the minnows didn't die'.
Also, it is rather risky and presumptive (IMO) to insinuate that others may disregard a pesticide product's label.
"The label is the law" is more than a slogan in my industry. It is a fact! Google "FIFRA".
There are valid reasons why some terrestrial herbicides, which contain the same "active-ingredient" as similar aquatic herbicides, should not be used in place of the aquatic counterpart. The respective product-labels will not "spell out" such reasons - nor are they required to do so.
I'm very puzzled when someone consistently voices an aversion to using herbicides in their pond; but is nonchalant toward pesticide label restrictions and instructions, and defers to frugal-based misconceptions when the time comes to actually use them.

Kelly you said you never heard of glyphosate in Eliminator. If the label says it, it must be the law.

I run my own tests for myself and tell the results as I see them.

I've cut the warning label off of every pillow I own.

John: my intent is not to debate the law or the rationale behind it. I was previously unable to locate an ELIMINATOR Label until I included the phrase "Weed & Grass Killer Super Concentrate" (as shown on your label photo).
Here's what I found....



It should be noted that this product’s signal word is “Warning”, rather than the lower-ranked “Caution” signal-word that is found on glyphosate formulations that are actually "labeled" for aquatic use. That's the first clue that there's a difference between the two formulations. The label is also fairly explicit concerning direct-applications to water.
In my opinion, it is inappropriate (and unlawful) to suggest, condone or encourage the misuse of pesticides – period; and especially so when based on simplistic comparisons of products' active-ingredients and cursory observations of minnows’ short-term reactions.

Easy answer is use an aquatic glyphosate product with the right aquatic surfactant. Don't use a terrestrial (land) one as they have been shown to cause real (not imagined) problems in the scientific studies. Or use another approved aquatic product other than glyphosate provided it works well on the offending plant.

I do try to be an advocate for a natural pond and post my small experiments and what has worked for me. Using a herbicide with a warning label for non aqua use isn't what one should ordinarily do. But there are times when approved labels can be terribly wrong. I have lived long enough to see a lot of them. When you mentioned labels are law many thought went through my mind. Here are a few.

My farmer used a spray that drifted to the house and I couldn't get my breath. He quit using it because he experienced the same thing.

As a pattern model maker we used different two part plastics. We got a new one that we used for a couple of hours when 20 patternmakers in the shop started having their fingers, ears, lips and faces go numb. There was nothing on the labels about this.

As a model maker we used a certain two part plastic and two of our guys became sensitized so bad they could only do wood pattern work. The plastic corporation, REN, sent in high powered execs to say their product didn't do this, but in the end they admitted to it. Again labels didn't have this warning.

A guy I worked with's pregnant daughter in-law took Thalidomide as an anti-nausea before it was taken off the market and the baby was born without legs or arms. Again the labels didn't protect.

My cousin's husband is a Vietnam veteran was told that the Agent Orange sprayed jungles were safe for them to be in. He now has leukemia and the government later admitted cancer was being caused by agent orange.

Also, Birth Defects Caused By World's Top-Selling Weed killer, Scientists Say ... As recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer .... ban on the use of glyphosate
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/roundup-scientists-birth-defects_n_883578.html

I've also used terrestrial herbicides for catttails when I didn't have the aquatic ones on hand and never saw any issues with the frogs or any dead fish. The most detrimental thing I have noticed to amphibians are Great Blue Herons and largemouth and smallmouth bass. I no longer have largemouths and keep the herons out of the water with staked lines. Whalla! Lots of frogs.

That said I do use a Shorekill for my cattails now.

Is it possible Kelly that part of the reason for the precautions on the terrestrial herbicides is due to a lack of testing which is expensive? I do know that is the case with some chemicals and compounds we would like to use in aquaculture. It's just that it costs thousands of dollars to get the testing done and it's a long time consuming process to approve them.

John; in the interest of avoiding a lengthy straw man debate, let’s move on.
By the way, my son is considering your floating island design as his future Eagle Scout project for our community’s ponds. So, thanks for your input and insights.

Cecil; your theory has a basis, as witnessed by the eventual aquatic registrations of numerous herbicides that initially held only terrestrial registrations (including glyphosate, imazapyr, fluridone, diquat, flumioxazin, etc). It takes far longer, and much more $, to secure an aquatic registration in comparison to terrestrial registrations. Thousand$ more? Not hardly! Try millions!
In the case of terrestrial glyphosate products versus aquatic glyphosate products, the issue of aquatic-safety is not glyphosate. Rather, at issue is the tallow-amine surfactant that is typically formulated with terrestrial versions of glyphosate. So, why are tallow-amines used in terrestrial glyphosate formulations if they’re so risky to aquatic sites? Simple! They represent the most cost-effective type of surfactant for glyphosate’s performance. Surfactants that are acceptable within aquatic sites and which possess comparable performance-characteristics to tallow-amines, are more costly in comparison.
There are many terrestrial herbicides that could make incredible aquatic herbicides IF it weren’t for some significant issues (toxicological, environmental, degradation/metabolites, etc). I won’t mention any by name, but one such product has been previously discussed on the board (it sounds like a south-of-the-border auto dealership).
Bottom line: Market segmentation and cost-burdening are often the underlying reasons for multiple labels and registrations for some specific chemistries. With glyphosate, however, there are technical reasons for the aquatic-vs-terrestrial formulations that are not disclosed on the respective labels.

Thanks Kelly. Makes sense to me.

Kelly, soon I will update the foam island.