Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment Marginal Plants for Small Waters

Over the past week I've been doing a bunch of research on this forum about adventurous plants. My pond is .35 acres, 10 feet deep at the deepest in Central Ohio. I have two sizable Chara beds and a decent amount of FA, but no large surface mats of FA. I just put 8 lbs of tilapia in on Saturday and manually reduced the Chara by about half, since the one chara bed is just outside the beach area and no one wants to walk through that stuff.

I have some small cattails starting to try to get started which I pulled out.

So now, to the question. My research tells me that both Pickerel weed and Arrowhead have benefits and they seem to fit my needs for nutrient uptake. However, I want to go into this fully understanding what I'm getting into. What I don't want to do is to replace one problem with another bigger problem.

So for a small BOW such as mine, are Pickerelweed or Arrowhead advisable as marginal plants to update nutrients that will otherwise be consumed by FA, Chara and cattails? How much and what kind of manual manipulation will be required on a regular basis to prevent Arrowhead and Pickerelweek from taking over too much of my small relatively shallow BOW?

Are there other better options?

The speed at which plants can grow and spread depends on so many variables that it is impossoble for me to predict the "manual manipulation" that the AH and PW would require.

BUT, I can say that my AH does not live in water more than 20" or so and the PW has not taken to water deeper thatn a foot. My pond ussualy ranges from 12" to 20" clarity (secchi disk).Both types of these plants have been in my pond for 3 years since it was renovated. The AH came in on it's own and seems to have stronger years than others as far as starting from seeds. I bought and planted the PW in a few places and those stands are now about 18" in diamter at the water' surface. I have not seen any start up from seeds.

With all that said...these plants are common to the midwest, aren't known to be fast spreaders, and are not hard to manually remove. I think you will know within a few years or so if they are going to have the potential to overwhelm you and at that point you can clean the out and try another type.

I think you will like them so long as your pond does not have a lot of 1-2' deep water.

Soft/hard stem bulrush is another option. 12" is about max depth and will grow in a "pod" unlike cattail that spread.
Arrowhead will not reproduce by seed unless you have fall draw-down where seeds drop from the achenes onto mud and then goes through several freeze-thaw cycles, but can also spread via rhizomes very effectively. Pickerel weed has seed but also spreads faster through rhizomes. APW is a great aquatic plant but takes some patience getting started.
I think nutrient conversion is going to be highest using AH and PW. AH also is an excellent choice as it also extracts types of metals as do others to some extent.
I can say by experience that the higher the nutrient load, the faster these plants spread but are very easy to grow. I think a good mix would be to add some Hardy lilies as well but I think you have to be careful and research the variety as some are more "lotus" than Lily.

Anyone who has chara should consider PK shrimp, in my opinion. They thrive on the stuff and feed the BG. Especially good if you don't artificially feed pellets.

Any reliable sources for PK shrimp?

no known sources on the forum or at a fish farm. Best option is to sweep a fine mesh net in vegetation in the shallows in local ponds that have clean fresh water to see if you can find some around you. Many on this forum would like to find a source. A few PB members have established populations after a small initial stocking. Some have sought their initial stocking source from a single seller on ebay.

More and more PB members are interested in and creating their own forage ponds. This will allow more and more of us to have larger populations and we may be able to share with our neighbors more readily when supply is available and easy to seine.

I ordered a few Arrowhead and Pickeralweed plants from pondmegastore. Over we found some blue flag iris from a local grower. We shall see how this goes?!?! Hopefully I'm not creating a mess by introducing these plants. time will tell!

Thank you for the tip on where to buy pickeralweed. Been wanting some for my pond since I saw them at QA's place. It is a really nice looking plant.

You might also think about Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) and Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis). Both of those are very attractive and not at all invasive.