Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations roundup questions

This is my first summer to take care of a pond

I done a search on roundup and found little info.
Sounds like it's hard on frogs. What about fish?

I stocked 50 lbs golden shiners about 3 weeks ago. I been finding a few dead each day. I sprayed some round up sat. morning today 60-100 dead.

Did I make this worse or is this still natural?

Very doubtful it's due to the
Round Up.

I presume you are using it for emergent shoreline vegetation like cattails?

Sounds like maybe normal mortality after stocking or possibly post spawn mortality or a combination of both.

I just applied it to some cattails and it isn't having any effect on my fish, and many of the bass are right in there with the cattails bedding.

Thanks Cecil that makes me feel better. I also recently put in 2 semi tires a neighbor gave me.
Any danger to the fish here.

Watching my g.s. float is not good!!!

No, the tires shouldn't cause any problems.

Cecil could you tell me approx. how many g.s. to lb. I forgot to ask the Jones people. they where nice size most about 3in.

At 3" long there are around 125 G.shiner per pound.

Roundup is not rated for aquatic use due to the surfactant (wetting agent) used in that formulation. The active ingredient, glyphosate, is found in many other herbicides (Rodeo, Aquamaster, etc). Typically these are rated for aquatic use because they lack a surfactant. The directions usually specify that you must add a "non-ionic surfactant". See http://aquanic.org/publicat/usda_rac/efs/srac/361fs.pdf

Frank

I spray round Up once a year along pond banks that are not worth weed eating. I have always tried to be careful not to get too much round up in the water. I have never saw a dead fish as many years as I've been spraying. Unless you really let a lot of round up into the pond, you should be ok.

Thanks for the help everyone.

I still have a lot to learn.

Frank, The link would not open I even tried aquanic.org no luck. I read on another thread to use coke is this what you are calling a non-ionic surfactant?

I use roundup and add dishwashing liquid as a surfactant. Cattails and other aquatic weeds have a oily, waxy type protectant on them. The dishwashing liquid works well to cut though this. I haven't had as much luck without the surfactant.

I thought I had read somewhere on the forum that Roundup is very detrimental to the health of amphibians. I don't want to kill off my frogs!

HeyBud,

How much of the diswashing liquid do you mix in with the Roundup? I need to make one more application but I'm out of the surfactant.

Yes there was a study done that showed it may be detrimental to amphibians. Apparently it wasn't conclusive as the company adimately disagrees and it's still on the market.

Unfortuantely I can't afford the aquatic herbicides anymore, and I can get Roundup from Sam's Club fairly cheap. The Roundup seems to work better too than a specifed herbicide along with Sidekick I was using called Shoreline. But in all fairness it was sitting in the garage for a year long with the SideKick so many that was a factor.

Funny you mention that Cecil, we sprayed cattails this last weekend and were low on surfactent as well, we substituted the same amount of dish washing soap to get the right amount. We did use Aquastar rather than regular Roundup.

Shorty,

How much dishwashing liquid did you use per gallon? Are your cattails as hardy as mine? It took three applications to cause mine to yellow and I have some out deeper I need to hit one more time.

Cecil, I'm not sure, my dad did the mixing and we made 55 gallons of spray. He hit the cattails from the shore the day before when I was gone, the next day we hit them from the pond side with my bass boat. If I remember right he had two cups of surfactent and then we added another two cups of regular dishwashing soap to the mix. All soaps are a surfactent as they help break the surface tension of water.

We will probably have to hit the cattails again in 3-4 weeks, they are a very hardy plant.

Cecil,
I kind of eyeballed the amount. It was about a third of a small bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid in a three gallon sprayer. I saw some stuff at Home Depot and I think it was called Sticker or something like that. I think it makes the Roundup or whatever you use stick to the weed better and is also a surfactant.

Bugfree

The link works fine for me. No coca-cola is not a surfactant. I used CideKick

Frank

You can use NIS which is pretty cheap for a gallon bottle and you use something like a pint per hundred gallons.