Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment How to control Southern Naiad (Bushy Pondweed)

Tracy,

I am adding GC this spring. I'll let you know how it does with my veggies.

Good luck with that Brian. I thought you already had some of them in your lake. I am leaning toward adding 5 this spring so that i don't have to use herbicide every year. I hate to add more but since I don't know how many survived their first year with the fish kill I will be adding more. I know that 3 14" per acre did not control last years spring niad growth.

In 2020 it looked like the grass carp fed more on the American pondweed instead of the Bushy pondweed. 2021 looks like there will not be much APW to feed on this year, leaving them to feed on the BPW.

When adding GC to existing ponds with LMbass remember the GC 8"-10" ones are not much bigger in cross section than a piece of bratwurst and very easy for a LMB even at 16" to swallow. Cross section of a bratwurst is 1.5"(40mm) and the gape of a 16" LMB is around 2.8"-3".
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=390449


When stocking GC in with LMB I always try to get 12"-14" GC. Before stocking more GC I always allow the GC to grow longer than 26"-28" before adding more GC. GC do not make a significant impact of vegetation until GC are around 26"-28" long. GC are a whole lot easier to add to a pond rather than getting them out!

Yikes. I like my American pondweed, just need to control the BPW. I wonder if this is a general preference, or specific to your situation?

Bill, that is absolutely correct. We only stock 12" minimum in length TGC and bigger if they are available. We've been called to restock ponds with an existing LMB population where the people have stocked 8"-10" TGC because of cost and have ended up with 0 TGC in the pond because of the LMB eating them.

We've seen LMB come and grab one of those larger TGC's, but spit it out in a minute because it was too large to swallow.

We did stock 14" GC from Todd Overton. And from what I have seen these are now in that 26"+ size. I saw one that was added in Oct 2019 and by spring of 2020 it had doubled in length and looked like it had trippled in weight. Crazy growth, if i had not seen it i would have not believed the fish could have grown so fast.

Im not sure what has caused the reduced numbers of GC. Could have been alot of things, from other fish or from Eagle, Osprey, Otters?

Frank. I had the best APW beds you could ask for. Covered the shoreline on 3/4 of the pond, Perfect for what i wanted but, like i said it looked to me that the GC prefered it over the BPW. Another thing was the BPW was so invasive it also chocked out the APW.