15 replies to this topic

[Canardroti]

Hello, I am a new member and recently built a small pond (200 gallons).
I purchased some water hyacinths and they are turning yellow , brown and dying.
I got the water tested and the PH was about 7.8 and the ammonia level was low.
I live in southern California and the pond get about 5 hours of full sun.
What am I doing wrong? I have about 15 feeder fish in it to test the water and they've been doing fine so far.
I've heard that I needed to get some iron for the plant but I have not been able to find any at Home depot or even at the Nursery where I got the water hyacinths.
Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

[oldmarine]

Welcome to the forum,

Do you have any other water plants of any kind in your pond now? I have water lilies (5), parrot feather (2), miniture cat tail (2), purple pickeralweed (1), penny wart (1), trap door snails (16), and the Shubunkins (7).

I'm not an expert on hyacinths. I have a 365 gallon pond and the water hyacinths that I had grew so fast that I had to start separating them and giving them away to other local pond friends. Just recently my water lillies started to cover enough surface water that I removed all of my water hyacinths and threw them away. The frogs weren't happy about removing the hyacinths because they would sit in and among them and hide.

I'm sure one of our pond experts here will give you the right advice, don't give up.

[Koillector]

oldmarine said:

Welcome to the forum,

Do you have any other water plants of any kind in your pond now? I have water lilies (5), parrot feather (2), miniture cat tail (2), purple pickeralweed (1), penny wart (1), trap door snails (16), and the Shubunkins (7).

I'm not an expert on hyacinths. I have a 365 gallon pond and the water hyacinths that I had grew so fast that I had to start separating them and giving them away to other local pond friends. Just recently my water lillies started to cover enough surface water that I removed all of my water hyacinths and threw them away. The frogs weren't happy about removing the hyacinths because they would sit in and among them and hide.

I'm sure one of our pond experts here will give you the right advice, don't give up.

Where did you get your trap door snails from? I've been hunting for some myself.
I need to manage mine too. I plan on it tomorrow.

[DrDave]

The problem might be that the pond has not matured and there are not enough nutrients in it to support the hyacinth. The biggest problem you have is only having 200 gallons to work with.

[koiguy1969]

DD is right insufficient food source is one possibility ., or too much sun if theyre still of a smaller size

Edited by koiguy1969, 08 August 2009 - 11:57 PM.

[DrDave]

I quit stocking water hyacinth a year ago. My wife, who works with one of my alliance ponder partners (subject of another thread) gave her some hyacinth a week ago. I reluctantly put them into my upper pond. Today a lady just had to have one and begged me for it.
I told her that they were all trimmed and didn't float well since my wife butchered them.
Stay with me on this...
I reached into the pond and to my surprise, every one I picked up already had new shoots and those were sending shoots out to another plant.
The moral of this story is: If your pond is healthy and has the right balance of fish, plants, filtration, circulation and aereation, plants will grow without any outside help.

I had planned on removing these after a week, now I am offering them on Craigs list next week.

Oh and they are in full sun, which in So Cal is relentless.

[Canardroti]

Instead of pointing out what is wrong, you should also point out how to fix a problem no? DD.

I have about 15 comets, 5 guppiest and 5 mosquito fishes, 2 crawfishes, 2 dwarf african frogs.

about 10 water hyacinth, 5 of small sizes and 5 big ones.3 dwarf water lilies.
The water is very clear and I can see all the way down to the 2 feet deep water.
The dimension of my pond is as follow 7 X 2 X 2.
The pond has been running for about a month now.The lilies are blooming very fast and the pads are getting nice and full. ( I put some pondtabbs in their pot). Out of desperation to save my water hyacinth, I crumbled 2 tabs into powder and dispersed it around my pond. No results so far, no dead fishes nothing. ( the water was conditioned 3 weeks ago)
I have a 250 gph pump running 24/7 . The ponds get about 4-5 hours of Full sun a day in Southern California.
What am I doing wrong ?

[oldmarine]

Koillector,

I originally collected my trap door snails from a lake about a mile from my house, Wapato Lake. Trap door snails are not native of this area, and I believe someone must have dumped them there. These trap door snails were all over the lake, and easy to collect up until last year when the park district killed almost everything in the lake try to kill an algee bloom. This last early spring I ordered twenty trap door snails from www.tricker.com, and they looked identical to the snails from Wapato Lake. So far the snails have done quite well at cleaning up any leftover food that falls to the bottum of my pond.

[DrDave]

Canardroti said:

Instead of pointing out what is wrong, you should also point out how to fix a problem no? DD.

I have about 15 comets, 5 guppiest and 5 mosquito fishes, 2 crawfishes, 2 dwarf african frogs.

about 10 water hyacinth, 5 of small sizes and 5 big ones.3 dwarf water lilies.
The water is very clear and I can see all the way down to the 2 feet deep water.
The dimension of my pond is as follow 7 X 2 X 2.
The pond has been running for about a month now.The lilies are blooming very fast and the pads are getting nice and full. ( I put some pondtabbs in their pot). Out of desperation to save my water hyacinth, I crumbled 2 tabs into powder and dispersed it around my pond. No results so far, no dead fishes nothing. ( the water was conditioned 3 weeks ago)
I have a 250 gph pump running 24/7 . The ponds get about 4-5 hours of Full sun a day in Southern California.
What am I doing wrong ?

You left out important information in your first post.
For starters you don't have enough fish to produce food for plants. I think is your pump is 1/2 the size as a minimum.
200 gallons is extremely difficult to manage. A larger pond is easier to manage and much more forgiving.

[oldmarine]

I'm sure DrDave is onto something from experience. All I have had is small ponds in my yard, and it seems that it is much harder to get a good ecological balance in a small pond v.s. a good balance of wild life and plants in a larger pond.

Like my 365 gallon pond it is harder to have a good variety of live plants, fish, snails, and other living critters in a small pond.

[Buck]

Hyacinths are heavy feeders. If you have a small bio-load in your pond (number of fish creating waste) then you must add nutrients on a weekly basis for plant health. Fish waste can provide the necessary nutrients but if there are not enough fish / waste / nutrients, then the plants starve, if there is too much fish waste, you will get too many nutrients and you get algae.
Some plants require more nutrients to thrive (like hyacinths) and some require less (mosses) but ALL aquatic plants need fertilizers just like a veggie garden, flower garden or a house plant would.

This may be helpful even though its info I wrote for aquariums, but the same fertilizing principles apply for all things aquatic... http://www.buckmansh...com/basics.html

[oldmarine]

Just for what it's worth: I found that the hycinths that I had grew really fast in my pond. To the point of crowding, and having to start removing some hycinths from my pond just about every other day. By the way, Hycinths make great compost.

Upon removing the hycinths from my pond I found the roots to be up to two feet long, and my pond is only two feet deep at the deepest point. I have to assume that I had the right nutrients in my pond for that plant.

[koikeepr]

Also, koi love to nibble the roots and that gives hyacinths and other plants a hard time in a pond. If you don't see nice long roots it does mean your fish are eating them. What I usually do is rotate the plants out of my goldfish pond since they don't eat the roots, and then put 'em in the koi pond and back again. It gives the plants a rest.

Plus, aside from all that everyone has told you already, depending on where you live it might be time for your water plants to start turning yellow...we've had a number of really cold nights here where I am and the water lettuce and hyacinths started to just yellow up. It's just that time of year too...

[koiguy1969]

for every nibble they eat they let 3 times that amount sink to the bottom to increase the debris accumulation...'floating plant' mesh rings dont let them get to the roots...if you have koi your roots are getting eaten.. may be to late to worry about it this year, but next year protect the roots and i bet they will flurish.. but im in michigan mine are in protective rings and are still flowering in mid september and are lush green and huge. your in california,yours should rolling fine still. i'll take pix and post today!!

[koiguy1969]

my hiacynths were small, browned out, and looking real shabby.. til i made floating plant rings.. my koi were tearing up the roots at a pace that i couldnt keep up with by just switching them out with the ones in the filter... weve been in the 60s and low 70s in the day and lower 50s and upper 40s at night here already..and my hiacynths still look like this, not to mention all the ones ive thrown out, last week alone a whole baby pool full, and our growing season is nothing like californias. pic 1 is hiacynths pic 2 is lettuce pic 3 is the ones in the filter.

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