Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants weeds going nuts....

Cannorcreek I had Eurasian milfoil as bad or worse then your pond. I put in 18 grass carp into my one acre pond and in 4 years the Eurasian milfoil and about every other submerged plant was gone. 18 was too many. I had a terrible winter fish kill and lost nearly all my fish, so I am starting to add grass carp six at a time so I don't eliminate all of the plants. I would like to add six more now but I don't want to take a chance of a winter kill taking them out right after I put them in so I will add them in the spring. Beside the grass carp I put in 20 KOI and 6 Israeli carp to control the FA algae so My pond went from looking like yours to this in four years.

John, Thanks for the advice and the great picture. Your pond truly looks much nicer than mine. However I'm told I may get a $250,000 fine if a grass carp is found in my pond. Koi would be OK I'm told, not sure about israeli carp.

There are always tradeoffs. I imagine I would trade off some turbidity from stirred up bottom if I put carp or koi in. I'm pretty sure they couldn't eat all my eurasian milfoil, but I may try it.

FA is stable at about 10-15 percent coverage and I'm finding raking now and then isn't that big of a deal. Next year I'll see if the budget allows for 30 or more pounds of tilapia

Canyoncreek there are always trade offs. The KOI and Israeli carp are mostly for algae control and they did a really good job on the FA. There was some turbidity, but some of it was pea green bloom, which is good. So how much was bloom and turbidity is hard to tell. The KOI and Israeli carp grew to be huge but I never had any more then what I stocked in the pond over the years and that has to be because the bass controlled them.

I think the grass carp could eat all the Eurasian Milf-oil if the numbers were close to mine at 18 per acre. My milfoil was so thick that I built a raft so I could put piles of milfoil on it while I was in the water to hull to shore. I finally give up harvesting as a waist of time. The trade off with the grass carp was they pretty well cleaned out the pond of submerged plants. Trying to get rid of too many grass carp was not working for me. I tried to spear some and that didn't work.

Tim (I presume), your dosing-math is flawed if you're calculating thousands of dollars worth of Sonar to treat 12 ac-ft of water for EWM.
Assuming your pond has little or no flow-through (static water), 3 qts of SONAR GENESIS should prove quite ample for EWM in 12 ac-ft. Depending on your selected source, 1-gal of SONAR GENESIS should cost less than $450. You can't beat the residual activity that it provides under static-water conditions, nor the ease of application.

Well, 1 quart of Sonar ($700) has killed all the Milfoil and kept the lilly's under control too. I'm very happy with the results and will use this again without hesitation. It's expensive, but compared to the hours and energy I spent raking, it's cheap. My pond is 3 acres and this was well worth it.

I am curious. Did you use the same product Kelly recommended? Seems to be a huge price difference. He was stating around $450/gal and you paid $3000/gal?

The Sonar concentrate is $700 quart. That's what was recommended and what I bought and used. The Sonar RTU (Ready to Use) is much cheaper and diluted. You basically pay for "x" amount of the concentrate either way you go. But, it did work and I'll be using it again in the future if needed.

That sonar is wicked stuff. Our HBG pond is now crankbait ready, thanks to fluridone.

Bill D, I went with Scott at HoosierPondPros and his calculations regarding the amount needed. I bought the concentrated Sonar/Fluridone. Its hard to find now for even the $700 quart I paid, but it really does work. I had way too many Lilly Pads on my pond too and it's knocked them back a bunch also. A complete win for me so far.

I believe I'll use a pint now ever year for the next couple then I can start skipping a few years between applications (if we're still here).

Remember, this is what I had last year.

Tim, as you know, simply referencing "SONAR" can be misleading nowadays since there are multiple formulations.
SONAR A.S. is a 4#a.i./gal formulation of fluridone (active-ingredient ~ a.i.), while SONAR GENESIS is a 1/2# a.i. per gal formulation. Therefore, on a straight a.i. to a.i. comparison, SONAR A.S. is 8X the a.i. concentration of SONAR GENESIS. That being the case, one quart of SONAR A.S. is equal to 2 gal of SONAR GENESIS (on an a.i. basis) but SONAR GENESIS also has some other unique characteristics that go beyond the a.i. concentration - which are very obvious to anyone who has applied/used both formulations.
Do not confuse SONAR GENESIS with SONAR RTU, which is (as you stated) highly diluted and ONLY cost-effective on VERY small ponds - i.e. those that can't justify at least one gal of SONAR GENESIS (which is equal to 1 pt of SONAR AS).
Are we thoroughly confused yet???

Let's put it this way, one quart of full strength, concentrated Sonar killed all the crap in my 3 acre pond.

It's wicked stuff. Matt Rayl recently chastised me for using so much of it in the HBG pond...

But hey, I won't have weeds for at least two years now.

If absolutely no rooted weeds and lack of habitat is a goal then Sonar can be effective.