My experience on controlling weeds in 3 acre pond - 06/28/21 03:16 AM
Moved to a new house 3 years ago with a 3 acre pond in the back. Max depth = 15 feet. Location is north texas. The pond shares land with a cattle ranch, and the cow manure gets into the pond and wreaks havoc.
Anyways, the 2 main nuisance plants in my pond are coontail and filamentous algae.
Here's a typical seasonal pattern:
Early March: completely clear
April: surface plants emerge (no algae or coontail yet), I don't mess with the surface plants and just let them be
May: small amounts of filamentous algae bloom
Mid June: Coontail emerges
Late June/July: huge amounts of filamentous algae and thick coontail -- can cover 80 to 90% of pond
Late August: filamentous algae starts to recede
September: coontail starts to recede
First I put in 2 aerators. Made absolutely no difference to the above pattern.
Next, I started using Mizzen copper algaecide. At first I diluted it according to instructions and used a spray to spray over the surface. It didn't work very well, at best may got rid of 10% of the algae/coontail
After that I tried using undiluted Mizzen with the sprayer. Again, no more than 10% improvement.
Finally, I nuked the pond. I bought 8 gallons of Mizzen and instead of diluting or spraying, I just used a pitcher and started dumping undiluated Mizzen straight into the pond in a concentric pattern around the boat I was using.
This finally worked. It got rid of 90% of the algae/coontail. I had to reapply it in the same amount on 5 separate occassions during the summer. So a total of 40 gallons was used in 1 summer.
The Mizzen instructions say that 4 gallons should cover 2 acres, or 5 gals for 3 acres. But when I tried that I got no results.
I also experimented with the timing of the application. The first year I didnt apply anything until the algae/coontail was visible from the other shore.
The next year I applied it in March before the major growth started. This helped curb the algae but for coontail it turns out that pre-treating the area before coontail emerges seems mostly worthless to me. The coontail was always massive in June/July even if I treated the pond 2X before coontail even emerged.
Another thing I noticed was that the time of day I applied the chemicals was critical. If I waited until evening to use the chemicals, it really didnt work. Also if I put the chemicals in and there was a sudden rain storm or overcast afterwards, the chemicals didn't work very well. I found out that you really need to put it in the morning at full sun exposure and hope that it stays sunny the whole day so that the algaecide will work its way into the algae/coontail. Otherwise you just wasted your money.
Anyways, just my experience.
I hate to use so much chemicals, but I am careful to treat only 1/4 of the pond at one time. I've never had a fish kill despite the huge volume of chemicals used.
Anyways, the 2 main nuisance plants in my pond are coontail and filamentous algae.
Here's a typical seasonal pattern:
Early March: completely clear
April: surface plants emerge (no algae or coontail yet), I don't mess with the surface plants and just let them be
May: small amounts of filamentous algae bloom
Mid June: Coontail emerges
Late June/July: huge amounts of filamentous algae and thick coontail -- can cover 80 to 90% of pond
Late August: filamentous algae starts to recede
September: coontail starts to recede
First I put in 2 aerators. Made absolutely no difference to the above pattern.
Next, I started using Mizzen copper algaecide. At first I diluted it according to instructions and used a spray to spray over the surface. It didn't work very well, at best may got rid of 10% of the algae/coontail
After that I tried using undiluted Mizzen with the sprayer. Again, no more than 10% improvement.
Finally, I nuked the pond. I bought 8 gallons of Mizzen and instead of diluting or spraying, I just used a pitcher and started dumping undiluated Mizzen straight into the pond in a concentric pattern around the boat I was using.
This finally worked. It got rid of 90% of the algae/coontail. I had to reapply it in the same amount on 5 separate occassions during the summer. So a total of 40 gallons was used in 1 summer.
The Mizzen instructions say that 4 gallons should cover 2 acres, or 5 gals for 3 acres. But when I tried that I got no results.
I also experimented with the timing of the application. The first year I didnt apply anything until the algae/coontail was visible from the other shore.
The next year I applied it in March before the major growth started. This helped curb the algae but for coontail it turns out that pre-treating the area before coontail emerges seems mostly worthless to me. The coontail was always massive in June/July even if I treated the pond 2X before coontail even emerged.
Another thing I noticed was that the time of day I applied the chemicals was critical. If I waited until evening to use the chemicals, it really didnt work. Also if I put the chemicals in and there was a sudden rain storm or overcast afterwards, the chemicals didn't work very well. I found out that you really need to put it in the morning at full sun exposure and hope that it stays sunny the whole day so that the algaecide will work its way into the algae/coontail. Otherwise you just wasted your money.
Anyways, just my experience.
I hate to use so much chemicals, but I am careful to treat only 1/4 of the pond at one time. I've never had a fish kill despite the huge volume of chemicals used.