Miracle Gro?

[JBtheExplorer]

So, I'm not positive but I think I remember a few months ago seeing someone on here say they put duckweed in miracle gro to make it greener and spread faster.

I was thinking about trying that with my not-so-healthy water hyacinth ,but I wasn't sure if I could or not because I dont know if it would effect the fish when I put the plant back into the pond after soaking it in miracle grow.

If anyone has any experience with this, let me know.

 

[Mmathis]

I think if you rinsed it well before you put it back in the pond, it should be OK.

 

[sissy]

concrete mixing tub or kiddy pool and I have been doing that for years and also works great if you get aphids on your water lettuce a nice bath in dish detergent and water and then a good rinse and back in the pond they go .

 

[Carolyn22]

There are water plant fertilizers on the market. They should be fish friendly.

 

[adavisus]

Other causes besides fertility can effect water hyacinth

Fish ripping the roots off and eating them, for one

Regards, andy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21940871@N06/
http://swglist.wordpress.com/

 

[Waterbug]

Sounds like an experiment I did once a long time ago. Back in those days water hyacinth not doing well was a huge mystery and of course nutrients were suspected, along with water temp, air temp, and a bunch of other things. People reported either their water hyacinth did great or they just didn't grow. Always the same symptoms, including a small root system that was basically black while healthy plants are huge (2-3' long) root systems with white and purple healthy looking roots.

One of the missing nutrients people thought could be the cause was potassium. I had the same concern as you...I didn't want to dump a bunch of potash into the pond if that wasn't the problem. If it was the problem I wanted to test the effect on fish.

So I set up 2 plastic garbage cans, filled with pond water and placed a single sick water hyacinth plant in each. In one I added 5 lbs of potash. That's a ridiculousness amount of course, but it was an experiment.

Two interesting things happened. First both plants took off growing. Big leaves, multiplying. Told me adding potassium was not needed. Also showed me what a low level of nutrients plants need to grow. These were closed systems. I only topped off to replace evaporated water (this was in San Jose CA).

The second thing it showed me was potash seemed to have no effect on fish. Unknown to me the plants had goldfish eggs on them, which hatched and the fry developed normally in both test tanks.

Have some other experiments I determined that the poor water hyacinth growth was due to goldfish eating the roots. The constant trimming just never allowed the plants to be healthy and just barely stay alive. Why fish in some ponds ate the water hyacinth roots and fish in other ponds didn't was unknown. I suspect that water hyacinth root aren't that tasty and so if a pond has other food available, like a tasty algae, the fish go for that instead.

No one ever reported seeing fish actually eating the roots. But every time someone moved sick water hyacinth to a separate tank, or into a filter, they took off growing.

I suggest a similar experiment.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

The PH of the water can be another cause of water hyacinth yellowing. WH like neutral PH, to slightly acidic. If the PH is too high the roots simply can't absorb nutrients no mater how much you put in the water.
https://www.gardenpondforum.com/topic/8992-water-hyacinth-greenhouse/

 

[HARO]

So, WB. were the fish actually EATING the roots, or were they after some other tasty morsel living in that jungle?
John

 

[Waterbug]

Don't know. No one I ever read posted seeing fish eat roots, bugs or eggs. Like plants bobbing around. I never saw fish even interested in the plants. However, it wouldn't take much damage, a day's worth of root growth could be nibbled off in a couple of bites. So missing it seems plausible to me.

 

[Waterbug]

For sure you want pH under 12, but 10 should be OK. Not great, but plants should increase in size. All my tests, pond, were in in the 9-10 pH range.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

In PH ranges much above 8 my water hyacinth started to yellow and the leaves eventually started to brown and wither, although as they turned yellow they still continued to grow to some degree. Could have been some other factors involved (wasn't fish in my case). but most well documented sources I have read agree that WH do best with a PH around 7 or slightly acidic.
http://www.apms.org/japm/vol11/v11p59.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15346865
http://www.atmosfera.unam.mx/editorial/rica/acervo/vol_10_2/1.pdf

 

[JBtheExplorer]

My water hyacinth have never turned yellow. They go straight from green to brown. they were doing good earlier in the year, even had a couple bloom, but now they look terrible and haven't spread or grown in about a month or so. I've never seen the fish eat the roots but they do pull algae off.

 

[Waterbug]

but most well documented sources I have read agree that WH do best with a PH around 7 or slightly acidic.

Yes, best. We're talking about death, not best.

The paper I cited said maximum growth was in the 4-8 pH range, but looking at the data in the paper 4.0 pH was the maximum growth. But plants still grew fine at 10 pH.

It's worth testing the water of course, but my money is always going to be that any pond will have water well within the pH range WH need to stay alive. It's really difficult to push a pond out of that range imo. So pH wouldn't be my first guess.

Nutrients also wouldn't be my first guess. It would take almost distilled water for WH not to at least hang on. Ponds have tons of nutrients compared to many water systems.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Yes, best. We're talking about death, not best.

The paper I cited said maximum growth was in the 4-8 pH range, but looking at the data in the paper 4.0 pH was the maximum growth. But plants still grew fine at 10 pH.

It's worth testing the water of course, but my money is always going to be that any pond will have water well within the pH range WH need to stay alive. It's really difficult to push a pond out of that range imo. So pH wouldn't be my first guess.

Nutrients also wouldn't be my first guess. It would take almost distilled water for WH not to at least hang on. Ponds have tons of nutrients compared to many water systems.

Actually I couldn't open the link you posted, this is what I get when I try to open that link.
"

Multiple Choices
The document name you requested (/japm/vol11/v11p59.pdf‎) could not be found on this server. However, we found documents with names similar to the one you requested.
Available documents:

• /japm/vol11/v11p59.pdf (common basename)

Please consider informing the owner of the referring page about the broken link."

 

[Waterbug]

You have to click on the PDF link. PDF links thru Google are a pain.