Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Getting my algae bloom back!

As some of you know I feed a lot of fish in my ponds as I raise them to sell once they reach trophy size. My largest pond which I call my "bass pond" is .62 acre and at this time I am feeding about 350 largemouth bass, 25 bluegills, a few dozen larger smallmouth and numerous smaller ones, and possibly up to about 100 yellow perch (I don't see most of the yellow perch but I assume they are on the periphery of the feeding area).

Problem is I used to maintain an excellent algae bloom about about 18 inches up until late last summer. This algae bloom was due to overflow from a nutrient rich trout pond, and of course nutrients from feeding all these fish.

Late last summer the algae bloom began to disappear and some type of filamentous algae went nuts on the bottom although it did not rise to the top like tyical filamentous algae. I'm sure I upset the balance of nutrients last year by taking out about 150 lbs. of larger pellet fed bass that were 2 1/2 to 4 lbs each. (Smaller ones are for taxidermy schools).

Anyway, this year Chara which has always been present is taking over as the nutrient uptaker although I am now seeing some floating filamentous algae around the edges too. I now have Chara that appears to be 3 feet thick on the bottom in some places with some small pondweed and sago pond weed. However small pondweed and sago pondweed are in the minority. Water clarity is at the max to the bottom of the pond of about 11 feet!

Raking Chara out as I do in my small trout pond is out of the question, so I assume my alternatives or killing off the macrophytes with herbicides and/or adding some grass carp to eliminate macrophytes and filamentous algae to get my algae bloom back. Am I right?

I do have about 10 ten to fourteen inch grass carp coming in a few weeks, although I am worried they may take to the floating feed and not eat much of the vegetation. (Hopefully the agressive bass will keep them from the feed) I am also concerned if they do eat the macrophytes, filamentous algae will take over instead of phytoplankton.

I seriously doubt I have access to tilapia up here.

Any thoughts?

The grass carp will eat pellets but should fill up on plants since they graize all day long. You may have a point about the bass keeping them away from the feed; I never saw my GC eating feed until their second year here when they were 20" - 24" (scared off by other fish or just too many plants to eat to go hungry?).

I'm trying to figure out why I have virtually NO FA this year. It's not the weather because all the ponds around me have some and a lot of them are really loaded with it. I think it has to be the combination of fish I have in right now, somehow. I sure don't consider "No Filamentous Algae" a problem but would like to know why.

Theo,

Do you have something else taking up nutrients this year or something that is more common than it was previously like some kind of macrophytes or even an algae bloom?

Are you seeing more rooted plants or Chara?

Chara as you probably know is not a rooted plant although it appears to be. It's an advanced form of algae that absorbs nutrients through it's leaves and stems just like filamentous algae.

Cecil,
Along with yourself there are a few other fish folks mentioned on the below web site. Some of them advertise tilapia.

http://www.in.gov/dnr/fishwild/fish/fishing/commfish.htm

Cecil, the only rooted plant I have in enough quantity to notice is (if I am ID'ing it correctly) "floating leaf pond weed." It is no more prevalent than last year, probably a little less.

Secchi depth is just a little less than last year (2005 range 1'7" to 2'6" vs 1'9" to 3' in 2004). A small part of that (maybe all of the change) I believe is suspended clay from the bottom, which this year has no FA on it. I am feeding about 2/3 what I did last year, in an effort to 1) limit CC growth somewhat (I figure to have about 30 left at the end of the fishing season and don't want them all to weigh 10 lbs) and 2) keep the CC a little hungry to try & aid GShiner predation. So the Cats (& also the Grass Carp) are hungrier this year; maybe they're eating the FA off the bottom before it can accumulate??? Also the first full year of BG/RES spawn is now a hungry horde of 2"-4" fingerlings (had a small, late spawn only in 2003).

I don't think the nutrient load entering the pond is much different this year (couple fewer cows, couple more horses "upstream"); we chemically fertilized one hayfield which is about 1/3 of the watershed, which we have never done before.

OTOH, if we didn't have anything to figure out, life would be a lot less interesting.