Again who is your fishery consultant?
The water clarity should be actually measured and recorded at least a few times during each open water season for best resulting information for long term pond management esp swim ponds. Water clarity trends will definitely occur.
Do you know the specific type of weeds (specie) that were killed? This will help a lot to determine how well the GC will eat them. Those GC are like you when you go to the salad bar. Some items are not eaten probably due mostly to flavor and texture. From my experiences with many GC I am convinced not all GC have the same weed eating preferences. Some will even prefer eating fish pellets. Most delicate weeds are always eaten first. GC will do their job, however you may not like the end results esp in a pond mainly for swim / recreation.
Trying to net out GC will give you a real good education as to how difficult they are to remove from a pond. Easy to put in very difficult to remove. They quickly become smart at avoidance for the attempts used against them. GC you bought had been previously exposed and educated to netting and nets. They also are very good jumpers at leaping over nets. I doubt you will ever catch one with a net. The clearer the water the harder it is to get the GC out.
FYI - FA grows and thrives on only the excess nutrients not being used by any other plants. Generally the more other plants there are in the pond the less FA will be present and the clearer the water becomes. The amount of FA growing tells anyone with the right knowledge there are excess and relatively the amount of nutrients present not being used by some other type of plant competitor.
If it was my pond with my youngsters swimming in a pond, regardless of the product label, I would not be using herbicides and algaecides in the pond and thus frequently exposing their thin tissue mucus permeable membranes to undue chemicals. We get plenty of chemical / pesticide exposure in our daily lives which is a good reason to avoid creating undue more chemical exposure in an active swim pond.
Cutrine products are a copper based algaecide. Copper is a heavy metal. It does not rot up nor deteriorate in the ecosystem. Look it up. Every ounce applied will be in the pond sediments in one form or another until those sediments are removed. Copper can build up in the sediments depending on how much has been applied. They neglect to tell that on the label. When sediments are saturated with copper, the copper ions will stay up in the water column that results in other eco-problems. Been there dealt with that problem which is where I learned it. IMO Tilapia are a much better ecofriendly algae FA management tool. Plus each fish removed at the end of the year REMOVES from the pond all the incorporated nutrients esp Phos and nitrogen present in that fish. Nutrient removal is key to lower plant production.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 04/08/26 05:24 PM.
