OT: Blanket weed in ponds

Anyone know a good way of controlling blanket weed in ponds? What sort of critter would eat it?

Reply to
John Rumm
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We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember John Rumm saying something like:

Sea Goat?

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

I'm sure I heard it being discussed on "Gardeners' Questiontime" this afternoon. iPlayer?

Reply to
Graham.

There seems to be a range of "throw this into the water" type products

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this will get rid of existing weed I don't know. This page suggests removing as much weed before treating.
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Reply to
Owain

New to having a pond myself, and haven't yet got a pump / filtration=20 system in yet, but...

If you have a Focus DIY nearby, or somewhere that sells small bags of=20 animal feed, look for barley straw - it's supposed to harbour some=20 sort of bacterial growth that kills off the blanket weed, but it isn't=20 a quick fix.

I've seen various "preparations" of the straw, some sewn into smallish=20 "pillows", whereas we were just told to sprinkle it over the surface.=20 A small bag goes a hell of a long way - the one we bought cost about=20 =A34 and we've used probably no more than about a fist in size out of=20 the bag, and it was quite heavily covering the surface !

We've had some in our pool for about 3 weeks now, not a lot of=20 difference to the weed yet, but it does seem to be thinning a little -=20 the majority of the straw has now sunk to the bottom, as we were told,=20 where it continues to rot at leisure, producing whatever it is that=20 restricts the weed.

The alternatives include spending about =A310 on quicker chemicals, or=20 =A315 on a japanese chemical that's supposed to dissolve the stuff=20

*instantly*
Reply to
Colin Wilson

Fishing it out with a hook is how I used to cope. If you don't care about fish and invertebrates in the pond there are algicides that work.

However the stuff then sinks to the bottom and causes nasty anaerobic conditions that can get out of hand.

In that case the advice given would be worth ignoring.

Reply to
Steve Firth

AIUI it grows when there's too much nutrient in the water. Our pond suffered dreadfully for the first few years but once the vegetation got established the problem just went away.

While the problem existed I tried various chemicals but I wasn't convinced by any of them. A bale of barely straw seemed to help a bit. Physical removal (put a stick in and twist it) was a good temporary fix. It's a good idea to leave the weed piled up at the side of the pond for a day or two so that the wildlife can escape back to the pond.

As for eating it, you could try stir-frying it with some garlic and chillies.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

The problem with having something in the pond eat this stuff, is that it won't have actually gone away - just been changed from weed into fish crap. The basic problem is there are too many nutrients in the pond and unless you can reduce the amount of this, you'll always have the problem. The only way I've found to deal with this weed is to phyically remove it. Let it dry out (in the sun - ha ha!) and it's volume decreases quite a lot. Also keep the pond clear of leaves falling into it and other ways that more nutrients can get in, to keep it clear in the future. Finally, keep the pond plants under control by vigourously pruning them to keep the mass of organic material in the pond down. Otherwise it'll decay and the released nutrients will give rise to more weed.

Reply to
pete

Tis what I have been doing - but can't get to all of it.

Tis part of the trouble - it would be nice to see the fish again! In theory there were nine in there a couple of months back - most I can see at a time now is two or three - they seem to like hiding in the weed.

Reply to
John Rumm

Ta for all the responses!

I was hoping someone was going to say, lob a couple of xyz fish in there, and they will keep it down... alas not so simple.

This was a large koi pond - however since having deported the previous owners koi, its now a ridiculously over specified goldfish pond (25,000 litres approx, 4 stage filtration, 0.5kW pump etc - although I only run the pump for a couple of hours a day now).

The koi seemed to keep the weed under control (or more likely there was so much fish crap floating in it, that it did not grow). So far I have been fishing it out with a long pole, and leaving it to dry. Sounds like I might have to get a longer pole and see if I can reach the middle bottom section, plus try some of the barley treatments.

Reply to
John Rumm

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember John Rumm saying something like:

Are you the JR who recently sold a Jobo CPE on ebay? If so, how did you get on with it?

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

On Sat, 16 May 2009 02:10:58 +0100, John Rumm had this to say:

Just beware that you don't harm any frog spawn in the pond...

Reply to
Frank Erskine

You may have hit part of the solution in that reply. Filtration systems typically involve bacterial action on the filter medium and the general advise (along with not cleaning them out too thoroughly) is not to switch the flow off for more than a few hours at a time as the bacteria start to die off. I wonder if you've effectively not got a bacterial filter system running any more and this is encouraging the weed.

Reply to
Calvin Sambrook

I'd also recommend planting some other, more attractive, vegetation to absorb the nutrients. Cheap "oxygenating" plants that you can just lob in will do the job. Your local aquatic centre will advise.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

GQT recommended Barley Straw (old method), but then said that lavender had recently been found to be better. Presumably you throw a bale of dried lavender in there.

HTH J^n

Reply to
jkn

In message , Frank Erskine writes

Isn't it a bit late for frogspawn ?

Reply to
geoff

Aha, you saw through my cunningly obfuscated ebay name then ;-)

(never was much good at thinking up aliases!)

£191, which seemed reasonable...

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Reply to
John Rumm

Its probably not an ideal pond for frogs anyway - there is no easy place for them to get out of the water...

Reply to
John Rumm

That's possible - but until relatively recently I was running the pump full time and the weed was still there. Then I switched it off for a few weeks (running it manually now and then). Did some rewiring on the outdoor connections (the installer had obviously missed the point of SWA cable, and had not continued the earth screen through any of the connections), and introduced the timer at that point.

I don't think the weed has got noticeably different since stopping full time pumping.

Reply to
John Rumm

That's sounds like a good idea... We have a very good aquatic centre place close by, although they do have a habit of relieving you of shed loads of cash if you are not careful!

What looks nice? The pond is designed with an inner ledge about 12" below the water line all round the perimeter.

Reply to
John Rumm

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