Shorty
Lunker


Registered: July 28, 2005
Posts: 1010
Loc: Lincoln, NE

Ewest, I saw your recent post on pond fertilization in the archives section and just wanted to add what I have learned this year. Applying herbicides to kill aquatic vegetaion is like adding fertilizer once the weeds start to decompose and decay. The nutrient load does not change, it only shifts to something else. If one treats for a specific type of nusiance weed then frequntly another type of aquatic vegetation is present in low numbers and is waiting to utilize the freshly released nutrients. I saw this at out at our pond this year, we used Navigate in a low dose in May to treat for milfoil and as the milfoil decayed the coontail and FA took off, the low dose we used was not enough to have much of an effect on the coontail. We then treated for the coontail and FA with a mix of Reward and Cutrine Plus which resulted in a "herbicide induced algea bloom", which is what I was hoping to get the first time we treated the weeds. The algea bloom has reduced the sechi disc readings down to 30" and is keeping the small amounts of remaining milfoil and coontail from growing in depths greater than 4ft of water. Right now aeration is keeping the algea bloom from getting out of hand but I am also starting to see a big increase in amount of duck weed in the pond right now. So, IMO, using herbicides to kill aquatic vegetation is very much like adding a dose of fertilizer once the weeds start to decay. The nutrient load does not change, it only shifts to something else, getting that nutrient load steered toward what you want it to feed can be a challenge though and the timing of the application is everything.

Forum Links for more reading:
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=386426#Post386426

Example for fertilizing
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=406685#Post406685

Last edited by Bill Cody; 07/05/23 09:48 PM.