Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations lime contractors in east Texas

Near as I can determine, liquid calcium carbonate hits quickly because it is effectively pre-dissolved. It can take crushed limestone up to 6 months to dissolve. The liquid will not have as long lasting an effect because there isn't as much real material present. You get a fast but short lived adjustment. It's ok for one season row crops but not what I want in a lake.

For east Texas lake managers, we can get crushed limestone out of Idabel and Hugo, OK. The price is $6 a ton. Hauling it to Tyler is $36-40 a ton. So less than 1/2 my quote. It's not the "super fine" that comes out of Georgetown, TX, but 3/16" and smaller. Loads are 25 tons per truck. I didn't ask about smaller loads.

A little additional information. At least one individual that has done commercial liming reports that the lime from southeastern Oklahoma is about 30% as efficient as the superfine stuff from Georgetown, TX. Factor that in when you do the cost trade off. 3 times as much to haul and 3 times as muich to spread for the same kick.

I dont know anything about the lime in that area but I do know there is a huge difference in quality of lime, and as we all know, the finer the better when you are talking about limestone, because too big a chunk of it is just a small rock, not much benefit to your ph balance at that point, might make good bluegill beds tho.

Isn't the finest lime the pelletized lime (vs the powdered lime)

Right, I was of the opinion that is a fine powder formed into a pellet but I may be wrong.

That's what I was told too. For plants, I was told to use the pelletized lime if there were plants in the ground, the powder if it was bare dirt.

Pellitized has a binder mixed into and then formed into pellets. Superfine is ground to powder.

One of the issues when spreading lime from a stationery position, like a pond bank, is that the lime powder can form a dome in the spreader bed if high humidity or rain causes the powdered lime to cake. It doesn't matter in pastures because the trucks are constantly bouncing around. I've spread lime and gypsum, and they both seem to have a good bit of powder along with the pellets.

Another problem I had with the stationary spreading of the lime into the edge of the pond is, my guy had bought a new to him truck, and he had a devil of a time to get the damn thing to just sit and run the spreader, the computer was wanting to do a tons per acre thing and without the wheels turning it was going into a panic, he finally figured out how to over ride the damn thing.

Still chasing lime for our lake. We now have a bid of $70/ton hauled from Georgetown and dumped. Still have to spread it. I have a guy willing to do that for about $160/hour his boat. We should get done for under $10,000 for 75 tons.

I've had good results using pelletized lime in my pond - only needed to add about 1.5 tons to get my previously clear 1 3/4 acre pond to have consistent blooms.