Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants FA in New Pond

In the last week or so, I have had a pretty good growth of FA spring up on my pond that was dug last year. So far it looks like it has been concentrated near my Rip Rap that I installed. The areas that were just left as normal or sand covered don't appear to have much growth at all. It appears the growth only extends out until the pond depth reaches 4-5'.

I was thinking that my rip rap has acted as a catch for the nutrient rich topsoil that washed in the pond as the grass was growing along the shore. And then the areas without the rip rap, the topsoil washed further into the pond and didn't leave as much nutrients near the surface? My grass is starting to fill in nicely, so I won't have a long term nutrient load going into the pond.

Since the pond doesn't have many other plants growing yet, I assume the FA is just burning up excess nutrients. I plan on transplanting some desirable plants into the pond to help establish them over the course of the summer.

Should I worry about treating the FA at this point? If I do, what do you think would be my best course of action at this point?

Closeup of the rip rap area



Looking towards the rip rap area



Non-rip rap area. This part looks great.

Honestly it doesn't look that bad!

Nice pond Huntmaster! I'd love to see more pictures of layout, size, and depth? Did you put SMB, YP, RES, FHM, GSH in already? How many and when?

Any spawn noted?

Aeration?

Do you have nutrients falling in from the sky (leaves?)

Is it a ground water pond or compacted clay bottom? Do you have a way to add more water?

CC,

Here's a link to my build thread. I posted a bunch of photos along the way.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=378044&page=1

I stocked the FHM, GSH, RES and cray fish last fall. The FHM and GSH have spawned. I was able to see a couple large schools of fry in the pond a week or so ago. Haven't seen a RES or cray fish since I stocked them but I'm sure they are still in there. I just stocked the YP last week.

No aeration yet since it's so new, but I buried an air line from my barn when I built the pond.

Very few nutrients will enter the pond once my grass matures as I built a berm around the entire pond and have very few trees that will drop leaves in the pond.

All blue clay bottom...filled by rain fall. So far it has been over my outfall nearly the entire time.

I didn't think so either, but I just didn't know if it was going to get worse. I figured I would run it by everyone here.

Huntmaster,
Thanks for the update. I love your pond, it looks very well thought out and in a great location! Your kids are lucky! My kids love playing around the pond and they never cease to amaze me in what they find in the water. i went back and checked the other forum link and I do recall seeing those posts, thanks for the pictures. When I scroll to the bottom the bottom pictures won't load (have x's in them) Were they hosted through a different photo service? Our work firewall may block pictures hosted through social media sites etc.

My ground water pond wishes it had blue clay at the bottom as after our spring 'high tide' water table event a few weeks ago I'm already down about 6" just from natural lowering of water table.

I've tried to be patient in stocking fish. That plan worked well so far as lately I learned about the benefits of grass shrimp and still had a predator free pond to stock them in. I'm not sure of my apex predator but the next step this weekend is to put in some minnows and see how many spawns I can see yet this year.

With mosquitos at record numbers it is time to get something in there that will eat the mosquito eggs.

I sank some pallet 'condos' about 3-4 weeks ago. Only one is underwater, the others are floating yet. The one that is underwater was out in the rain the whole last year and is 'aged' The others just seem like they won't waterlog no matter what. So far the turtles have loved the floating pallet piles. Thanks to ideas on this forum I used the orange drive way stakes to hold them in place which worked well and as high tide came they just floated up on the stakes and now are floating back down again.

I put landscape fabric on top to make a more solid flat surface for minnow spawn and the turtles seem to like the pallets and the warm black top and sun themselves constantly on them.

A male/female duck landed this spring and mom quickly found a nesting place in the nearby woods across our driveway. Now we have 2 ducklings in the pond looking for plants to eat. The male duck likes to hangout on one of the pallets as well.

Water is clear, I'm surprised that I don't have much plant life at all yet, Your water temperature, has it come up yet?

I have no filamentous algae this year even though last 2 weeks of nice weather has warmed up the surface temp. last year about 10% coverage.

I may have to fire up the well and try to boost levels a bit if we don't get any decent rain.

Let me know if you see the crayfish and how the perch do.

I assume you will use walleye to control perch, you should have deep enough conditions for them?

Your limestone riprap could be the softer variety and leaching calcium phosphate with encourages attached algae growth. Better rock would have been igneous coarse washed gravel. Consider sprinkling Phycomycin or Green Clean Pro around in the areas where the FA is growing. See if that helps and report back. You may need to apply regularly due to lack of other plants consuming available nutrients.

Well I found a bag of the clean pro and spread some on a small portion as a test. We'll see how that works. It hasn't really gotten any worse in the past week or so. Boy they don't give that stuff away, Do they?

Peroxygen products leave no harmful chemical residue and it oxygenates the water as it works. You may have to apply it periodically to get effective control. Peroxygen products work best on small or short growths of algae thus treating early and regularly when growth is small and tender and attached to submerged surfaces is the best management method. Don't let the FA get long and stringy.

With nothing else in the pond to use nutrients or the dissolved fertilizers expect to regularly see common growths of FA.