Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Algae in Soutbeazt Texas

Almost anyone that lives in Southeast Texas knows that algae is a problem. Unfortunately, the 3 acres or so of my land that drains into my 0.9 acre pond is wooded (mostly Cedar Elm and Hackberry). This causes a real nutrient load to be washed into the pond every fall. I treat with Cutrine Plus but it is a never ending battle all summer. Lately, about 4 days after spraying the soreline with the Cutrine, I use a sand rake to groom the shallow water along shore. This helps break up the mats of filimentrojs algae helping prevent the large mats from floating to the surface. I got to wondering, since the copper in the Cutrine eventually settles to the bottom, does the raking stir the copper back into the water making it somewhat effective again? What do you think?

Thanks fishinrod, yes I usually remove all the algae I can. As I'm removing it I pile it up then later use a fork to pick it up and haul it off with my tractor front loader. In fact, I made a tool for this out of 20 feet of aluminum tube with a shallow dip net on one end and a fishing dip net on the other end for large mats.

My Talapia do die off in winter but the catfish quickly clean them up. I have been trying to remove the catfish and only have bass and perch but not sure I'll ever get all the cats out.

One thing I plan to try this fall is make a couple of sediment fences to try and stop as much of the leaf matter I can from going into the pond.

I like the sound of your helpers cleaning up the dead tilapia. I'd be for keeping some of them. Do you believe they interfere with your LMB/BG goals?
As esshup suggests, he absolutely understands tilapia stocking, add more than the 30 pounds of tilapia after killing off the bulk of your FA. You may see completely different results when the tilapia reach critical mass.