Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Identifying plants will grass carp eat Eurasian Watermilfoil

I got a lot Eurasian Watermilfoil in my pond. I am wondering if grass carp eat them.

Welcome to the forum!

Yes they will. What are the other plants that you have in the pond? (submerged)

I had developed Eurasian Watermilfoil really bad. I ended up putting 18 grass carp in my one acre pond and the Eurasian Watermilfoil was gone in 4 years.

Great. I will get some grass carp after my pond fixed.

Noticed mostly Eurasian Watermilfoil. and some floating algae

John,

What did you do with the carp after the watermilfoil was gone? They had pretty much wiped out all vegetation in the pond at that point, correct?

Bill D, that's a great question. These guys are very smart. I wanted to reduce the amount of grass carp I had because they were eating almost all of the submerged plants. I tried spearing them and speared two but they got away. Then they wouldn't get close to me to get them after that. Then I had a winter kill that killed everything in my pond. So if there is a downside that is it. Getting rid of some.

All of my EWM disappeared this year, no grass carp, no chemicals, just prolonged muddy water from a lot of rain early this summer. I may need to stock more grass shrimp due to the lack of cover.

If the water clears up next year I'd bet it shows back up, either from dormant roots or from seeds. It's a PITA to get rid of permanently!!

Water has been clearing up with the cooler weather, still no sign of it yet. Late 2012 it was getting thick and growing off the bottom deep so at ice out in 2013 I added a conservative amount of pond dye, secchi disk readings went from 96" to 36". This kept it growing in less than 3 to 4 ft of water all summer which was about the perfect amount of cover. I'll be OK if comes back, I think I can keep it under reasonable control by actively managing the water clarity. The clearer the water becomes, the more of a problem EWM is as it will grow deeper and utilze more nutrients which will prevent an algae bloom. The trick is to steer the nutrient load into an algae bloom early rather than letting EWM get a cool water head start on a bloom.