Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Fertilization Pond supplements

What's everyone's opinion on adding benefical bacteria to help control pond muck? I know EasyPro makes Pond Vive that has barley straw in it that comes in packets. Is this stuff worth adding or a wast of time and money? What about pond dyes?

I have used some products in the past, but find that the whole "barley straw" thing is just a gimmick and have NOT found that one with barley straw or barley straw extract works better than ones that do not. I tried a product by Pond Biologics, I think they call it Muck Buster, last season and seen very good results in a short period of time. I am continuing to monitor the muck loss, but so far have seen over about ten inches last year alone.
As for the water dye... Well, I guess that depends on whether you like blue or black water. But the theory makes plenty of sense to me.. block the sun from getting to the bottom and slow the growth of weeds.... That's just my $0.02

re: dye

I prefer to get a phytoplankton bloom going that limits visibility to 18"-36" rather than use a dye. More food for the YOY fish that way.

But if you already have macrophytes established that can be easier said than done. Then you're just feeding the macrophytes.

Been there done that!

Can't agree with the barley straw always being a gimmick. Texas has had some major, dang near total, fish kills on big reservoirs due to red algae infestation. It obviously got transferred to some pretty large bodies of private water by birds. One guy documented that he had the only red algae free body of water in his area of North Texas by using barley straw. I believe his "pond" was around 40 or so acres.

OTOH, I've seen it not work on others.

Lusk has successfully used bacteria as part of an overall plan to rid a 1.5 acre pond that I know of that has/had a huge filamentous algae infestation. I recall that the alkalinity level was off the charts due to a huge amount of limestone in the runoff area. The bacteria was part of a solution that included spraying, aeration, tilapia and dye. Before calling Lusk in, I tried 100 pounds of tilapia to no avail.

Use Google Scholar and search "barley straw" "algae". It is no gimmick, but I do not know about extracts and such.

http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/19957/1/BarleyStrawtocontrolalgae.pdf

PondPro are you in the pond/fisheries business ? Their is scientific data on barley straw. It will work some places but not others. Please detail how you got rid of 10 inches of muck in one year.

Cecil you can do what esshup described and many of us do. The key is in the timing.

I use dye in the HBG pond and I'm sold on it. perhaps its use might depend upon the goals and management practices in place? I think the trend is to typically think of all ponds in a balanced light, but I wonder if there are in fact situations where dye is preferred over a natural bloom.....

"Unbalanced ponds", where the goals and practices favor one or two species, and management is hands-on and somewhat specialized, might do well with dye when compared to a natural bloom. Some ponds may not require the emphasis on establishing or maintaining a natural food chain that a balanced pond will, nor do they require the amount of natural vegetative cover, or structure.

Not to mention...I've yet to see a "dye bloom" crash and contribute to a fish kill.

I agree with you. In ponds that have a high population of hybrid fish, where you don't depend on YOY recruitment for forage fish, I prefer dye vs. a bloom. Plus there's the possibility of the phytoplankton dying off and FA taking over, or the macrophytes running amok like Cecil said. This is another one of those "it all depends" moments.