Everyone's favorite - water hyacinth

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In my small stock tank, 35 gall, I have a lot of WH and a few guppies. I pulled a WH out today and I feel terrible for the guppies! They had no where to swim! My WH had roots that were two to three feet long! Healthy gorgeous white and purple roots. Same in my 110gall stock tank (minus the fish). So I did a full trade to the big pond.

The koi are clearly eating the roots in the big pond as they were about 1/2 inch long. Hopefully I can just continue to switch the plants back and forth every few months. I LOVE WH blooms. But they are so much trouble!
 
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I've tried the floating net thing, guessing the holes in the net were the right size for the fish to nibble on the roots. I"m just calling it quits.

I will switch the plants back and forth from the big pond to the smaller to recover after the fish have eaten them down.
 

addy1

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I had them one year, they bloomed nicely in the tiny pond, in the big pond, bloomed a little, I decided they just weren't worth the effort.
 

Troutredds

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They're doing well here this year, but only a couple blooms so far. Like Sir John states, they're annuals here and stop growing in water below 54 degrees or so.
image.jpg
image.jpg
 

Mmathis

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Not here. Hoping my new rotation idea will get them back on track.

When I took my pond down for renovation a few months ago, I had some WH that was just starting to grow and fill out. I might add that I rarely get blooms -- in fact, only twice that I can recall, but the plants usually do OK.

Anyway, I took all of my pond plants [marginals & submerged] out and placed them in temp. holding in a plastic kiddie pool [also had an air stone in there], along with as many tadpoles as I was able to rescue from the pond.

The kiddie pool gets maybe 4 hours of direct sunlight, but it's the best I could do. As for the WH, I doled those out into various containers, including putting some in the stock tank with the fish. Of all the locations with WH, I thought the kiddie pool was the worst idea as it was crowded and not very deep. Then, over time I ended up with an outdoor nursery tank for my fry, so put some WH in there, as well.

I might add, that every container -- except the ones containing fish -- got an initial dose of liquid fertilizer....

I noticed right away, almost within days, that the WH in the kiddie pool was starting to look awesome -- you could actually see the "green" filling in the leaves and they were becoming huge! The ones in open containers and totes [which actually got more sunlight] about died. The ones in the tank with the fish were pitiful, but I was restricting sunlight there in order to regulate the water temp.

So, I basically did what you are doing, and started rotating them. When any WH's started looking pitiful, they went into the kiddie pool. I have since discovered some fry that survived in the kiddie pool, so it no longer gets dosed with fertilizer. No idea why one environment succeeded, while another one didn't, but rotating the WH definitely helped.....
 

tbendl

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Priscilla, I saw a post where you used pipe insulation, cut into strips to "corral" the WH against the sides to hide the liner. Are you still doing that and if so do you have additional pictures? It looked beautiful in the 1 picture that I saw of it and I am considering doing something like that on areas that I can't rock around.
 
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Priscilla, I saw a post where you used pipe insulation, cut into strips to "corral" the WH against the sides to hide the liner. Are you still doing that and if so do you have additional pictures? It looked beautiful in the 1 picture that I saw of it and I am considering doing something like that on areas that I can't rock around.

No I abandoned that after my first batch of hyacinth died (fish ate them). It did look great and did an awesome job of hiding the liner. This is my third batch of hyacinths in 7 months.

But now that you have reminded me I might do that again.
 
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I am going to borrow the idea since I won't have fish in my pond... Now I have to find some WH.. Lol

Water lettuce also looked great. Its really hard to find floating plants that are high enough to hide liner.

I just planned my pond so badly, the liner is totally exposed all around the pond except for where I built a deck. :( With my kids, I just don't have time to re do it now that I know I should have left a lip around it to stack rock at the water line. And all my friends are bugging me to come see the pond, but it looks crappy still ..... ugh!

My Dad told me about some sort of hydraulic cement that sets very quickly, so I think I am going to stick some smaller rocks on the edges of the large rocks to try and hide the liner. Like this -------] Keep the cement out of the water.
 

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