no aquatic plants to speak of

I have a 1 year old pond that is 3/4 of an acre stocked with large mouth bass and bluegill. When the pond was built, I put in 5 stacks of pallets. This winter I added a couple of Christmas trees, and I have also built a couple of rock piles in shallow water.

A local fish distributor recommending stocking grass carp when I stocked the other fish. A year later, there are basically no plants in the water to speak of. The fish have some good artificial structure (listed above). Should I try to find a solution for more plant life, or should I be happy that I don't have the other problem - out of control algae/weeds.

Thanks for you opinions.

If you build it they will come! Don't worry the plants will find you eventually. I'd be happy for now!

Cecil is correct soon you will be asking us what to do about your algae and or weed problem. duck and goose manure will supply plenty of algae spores and weed seeds.

Thanks for your thoughts. My 3 inch bass have grown to about 7 inches in one year.

I just relax, fish, and go with the flow.

Left to its own devices a freshwater area will attract, guess what, the worst invasives on the planet first (no surprise there) when theres a fertile empty spot, what else can happen...

Its not a bad idea to introduce plants that have favourable characteristics before that happens, give them a head start before nature rules despotically. Natures rule is for one species to arrive at a habitiat every ten years, so the local 'thug' plants get quite a head start...

Introducing the likes of cyperus, pickerel, aquatic iris, water lilies, say a dozen species of year can diversify a habitat so there are all sorts of niches developing for beneficial insects to provide a steady supply of protein for the higher end of the food chain...

Plants with positive characteristics which are steady growing create sheltered shallows, shaded cover from predators, food for grazing, these can get to dominate and make functional the 'empty areas' so in the long term you have everything working for your priorities, rather than against them...

Regards, Andy

I would not recommend introducing water lilly unless you have designed the pond from the construction phase for lillys. i have treated a few ponds for lillys that cost 5K of so for the treatment. and they are very hard to eradicate therefore if they get out of control you are looking at a thousand bucks a year to keep them from over running your pond.

generally it takes one or two knife cuts to take out a water lily, perhaps you are confusing them with lotus that have tunneling rhisomes, or then theres the nuphar's which tend to spread if neglected for a long time.

There are a hundreds of water lily varieties which are not invasive and take maybe a pleasant afternoon a year to tidy up. How anybody could be put off using good waterlilies by the notion of them costing a thousand bucks for pruning a well chosen plant might be a tad unrealistic, and probably doesnt know much about aquatic plants beyond chucking chemicals and inflated bills at them.

Regards, andy

Don't wait for Mother Nature to colonize your pond with plants.

I waited 20 years for this to happen and all I got was 26 cattail plants.

I got fed up with waiting and I went out and grabbed some plants for my pond.

Where I live water lilies are not invasive because ducks eat them almost as fast as they can grow.

Your local DNR can give you some info on native stuff to your area if you want to jump start the plant growth.

The invasiveness of plant species varies greatly from area to area. It also varies from variety to variety. Add to this the differences in locations and you get lots of "if's, and's and maybe's". So many people on this forum have their own personal experiences but those experiences may not apply to other areas. Read lots of posts and then ask local experts their opinions.

I'm of the opinion that we are better off adding the species we want rather than just letting nature taking it's course.

dph,
I will side with the guys recommending placing plants where you wnat them instead of waiting to see what appears.
Andrew makes good suggestions. Do a search under his member number for lots of suggestions on plants for different aplications.

Hello everyone,
I am in the same situation as dph, I have a small pond that is less than one year old. I don't have any growth yet and was thinking of introducing several lillies, sago, and muskee weed. I can get the lillies locally here in sw Michigan, but I haven't found any sago or muskee? Can you order them online? Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks,
Large Mouth