Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Killing vegetation

I'm look for advise on killing vegetation by using pond dye to stop the sunlight penetration. I really let my pond get out of hand this year. Normally I keep the pond at full pool using my well. Well this year I did nothing to see how nature would take care of it. Let just say that nature didn't take care of it. The aquatic vegetation got so dense there was no area to fish. I have been raking the pond daily for months now. Pulling out coon tail 3 feet wide and sometimes 6 feet long. I have gotten out most of the vegetation so that when I kill off what's left there won't be a fish kill due to oxygen depletion. Well' I'm hoping. The pond seems to be pretty clear now. But I do want to kill off the remaining weeds and still continue to pull them out as well. If this were the spring or summer months I would have fertilized the pond. But since it is October , I dyed its dark blue to stop the sunlight. I know there are other ways of doing this, but this is the route I chose. So my question is how dark does the dye need to be to be effective? The water is dark but I can still see through it. Should I go darker?

Do a google search for Secchi disk. Learn how to use it. I believe plants can utilize sunlight to grow that penetrates 2x the reading that you get.

Also search on here for what dye does the the bottom of the food chain. It's something that I'd be concerned about if I had a pond and I wasn't feeding the fish on a daily basis with good fish food.

Thanks esshup, but I'm not concerned with the food chain at this point. I just want my pond back in order. I got no enjoyment out of it at all this year. I'm more concerned with the vegetation problem.

In my opinion I don't think your going to be able to get the pond dark enough to kill or keep plants from growing. You might be able to slow the growth by shading, but killing or keeping plants from growing is not possible. Since you mentioned coontail, you know this plant isn't rooted so it floats near the surface or can move into shallow water where it will be able to get light. This website states coontail can grow in low light conditions as well: http://www.mciap.org/herbarium/Coontail.php
If you can see through it, then light is definitely making it through the water column. Plants really don't need a lot of light to grow and once they make it to the light attenuation level they will spread laterally. This is why hydrilla has 75% of its biomass in the top 1/2 to 1/3 of the water column.