Controlling pond blanket weed?

[burton]

Hi

I’ve a lot of blanket weed in my pond at the moment and I’m struggling to keep on top of it. I’ve seen a few products based around barley straw. The reviews I’ve seen are mixed; from great, through no difference, to made my pond milky before clearing up. Has anyone experience with said products?

I understand the root causes may be light or excess nutrients. Im stuck with the location and therefore sunlight; but I plan to tackle the nutrient problem longer term.

cheers

[Phil]

You can reduce light with water lilies and the like. Our pond, which gets a fair bit of sun as ponds should, is covered in duckweed too which, although a pain, does do a good job of keeping the light levels down and can easily be skimmed off with a net, or hands, to control it.

We have lots of oxygenating plants too and the water has remained clear and free of blanket weed year on year. No fish though.

[housemouse]

Tadpoles eat blanket weed, but you may need quite a few!

Grass carp would eat it, possibly ducks?

Many fisheries (including my fishing club) use bales of straw to limit algae growth, but I have no idea about quantities.

[amyway]

You need to remove the nutrients that are feeding the weed, and replace with weed with other plants. That means not feeding any fish you have in it and reducing stocking levels.

[nikky]

What about ducks?

[donna]

Excess nutrients will encourage blanket weed. Plant something like water mint, water forget-me-not. Both are pretty rampant plants and will help to use up the nutrients. A water lily can help too because its leaves spread over the surface and shade light from the water. Even the dreaded duck weed is pretty good at keeping the light out.

I’ve used barley straw for a few years and found it to be good. I use the actual straw (available fairly cheaply in bundles from the Bay) rather than barley straw extracts.

It does take time to work – up to 6 weeks – (and the plants will take time to grow too). Unfortunately the blanket weed has got the drop on you as it is already doing well. Removing blanket weed physically is easy, provided the pond isn’t too big, using a cane or big twig; rotate it and the blanket weed will get caught.

[Sammyf]

How old is the pond? The first summer of ours was thick of blanket weed, the second year we had a bit then nothing the third year as the plants had fully established by then. I read online that the worse thing you can do is remove it, apparently it causes it to release more spores and comes back faster. I ignored that though because it was so thick it was stifling all life in the pond.