Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire sterile grass carp for a pond - experience?

Thinking about getting some Triploid (sterile) carp to do weed control in a pond. Have read up on it a bit and have a couple of local options for sourcing. Anybody have any experience/advice with this?
- pond is about 3.25ac
- spillway for overflow (no pipe)
- grassy/leafy pond weeds that I'm hoping they'll work on
- other fish in there are mostly bream and a few bass

Thanks.

Put a couple of White Amur (similar sterile species in one small pond I have. No weeds, so I guess they do the job. No idea how many you would need in a 3 acre pond. Put a couple in another small pond I have several times only to find them on the bank harpooned by Blue Herons.

I have a tiny little pond with bream, crappie and cats and the grass carp do a good job. I only have 2 in it and they are huge.

Had local DNR fisheries guy analyze my 2 acre pond last week. He identified the weeds under a microscope and suggested tilapia would be better than carp

Everyone I have talked to about pond management says you really need to have a professional look at it and make a recommendation. Of course a few carp (you don't need many) won't hurt anything and may help, but they may not help either

I have a pond consultant coming to confirm dnr recommendations and actually do the work (liquid and granular herbicide application and tilapia/carp stocking. He is charging me $250 plus the cost of fish/chemicals. Figure it is well worth the cost for the time and to ensure I don't screw something up

I have several big farm ponds we fish across the river in SW Iowa that we're in the process of removing all but a few. These are in the 12-20 lb class and are destroying bluegill and bass production by continually wiping out their nests. The owner stocked them twice 25 about 15 yrs ago another 25 at 10 yrs so I'd guess there are still 40 remaining in this particular 20 acre lake and he'd like to keep about 5-7 at the most.

My own personal observation here...I would choose an alternative method of weed control and forget the carp especially in a small 3.25 acre lake.

I have 6 in my 6 acre pond. They have not harmed our fishing. We had a duck weed problem & they solved it.

5+ years ago my black lab pulled a 3 foot rotten grass carp out of the pond & rolled in it. It took days to get the smell off him.

My IWLA chapter uses them and they seem to do the job.

A small state-run pond introduced them a couple of years ago due to really heavy algae growth, but so far, they don't seem to be doing the job. After about the middle of June, that pond is pretty much unfishable and you can almost walk across it on the slime.

our neighborhood has a 7 acre pond with carp in it.

They do keep the vegetation down. They also limit the gamefish reproduction. I've watched them come in and vaccuum out an active bass redd, despite the bass's best efforts to chase them away.

Grass carp can be very, very effective on especially rooted plants if the water temperature gets into the 70's at least. We used about 40 of them on 7 miles of canal, and they kept it spotless, but that was in conjunction with many, many tilapia.

I'm starting to sell more and more tilapia for weed control purposes, and they seem to do better than I expect them to. The nice benefit of tilapia is that they a) reproduce like crazy, so you get the added benefit of providing feed to your bass, and b) they winterkill in almost all US locations except Florida, so they never over populate.

There are several species of tilapia. O. zillii is the most effective on plants, but almost impossible to get your hands on. Nilotica are pretty effective, as well, and available all over the country from guys like me for very little money.

If you do go with tilapia, make sure you get the mixed sexed stock, rather than the all-males, unless you are in it for food production.......

got 1/2 acre pond in the backyard with 4 large goldfish (10lbs or so) seem to keep the water hyachant better than the carp did. The grass carp were picky about what they ate but the koi seem to eat anything green. plus the grandkids like to watch.

What the koi (gold fish, common carp, etc) do is stir up the bottom of the pond enough that the turbidity of the pond prevents light from penetrating. Since almost all plants, including algea, start on the bottom of the pond, turbidity prevents them from getting a start. That by itself can eliminate most plants in a pond.

If you have a reasonable size pond (acres, instead of square miles), products like Aqua-shade and Black Veil also block the UV light from reaching the bottom of the ponds and are safe and economical ways to reduce plant growth significantly.

Thanks for the responses y'all.