Hello I have been searching many sites trying to identify a floating weed I have on a farm lake, I have contacted a fishery nursery and they said it is called Fairy Moss but when I look up fairy moss the weed I have is nothing like it, so I will try to explain what it looks like and maybe there is a weed expert on here that can identify it for me. It is like tiny bits of light green that cover the whole lake if you throw a stone in they seperate and you see the water for just a few seconds before it very quickly rejoins up again and the water is hidden under this weed, when you try to net it all you get is tiny light green bits, but the lake is too big to net it out, but can anyone do a search as I am not good at looking things up on pcs, and try to identify this weed then maybe I can see if there is a cure or not for it.

Duckweed?

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Carried it in full, then carry it out empty.

Duckweed?



Not quick enough!

[quote=Steve Walker;880180]Duckweed?



Not quick enough![/QUOT

Yes this looks like it alright now is there a cure I wonder . . . . .

---------- Post added at 11:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:11 PM ----------

Thanks for the info pity the ducks don't eat more of it then huh,

From experience with garden ponds once you ahve duckweed present it is nearly impossible to get rid of. I dont know if there are chemical ways of doing it though

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Thanks for your help and it is quite a big lake really so netting would not work, do you know if Barley straw helps ort is this for other weeds.

A farmer I knew cleared his duck weed with a few nets of barley straw. It was a good few years ago but I think that's how he did it.

That's weird, as I cannot get it to grow in my pond, only grows in the water butt, and every time I transfer to my pond it just goes black and dies off.

Barley straw is effective against blue/green algal blooms but not against duckweed, which is a kind of flowering plant, not algae. Decomposition of the barley in water produces various compounds including acetic acid (like vinegar), napthalic products (like mothballs) and various phenolic substances (like disinfectants) all of which, in the correct quantities, will control the algae.

For duckweeds and other miniature flowering plants, a more complex chemical treatment is needed and whilst this can be effective, it can also be very expensive, depending on the acreage of the water concerned.

I researched all this stuff as our Club had a problem with algal blooms and duckweed some time ago. As the lake was over 100 acres in size, we eventually abandoned intervention as it would not have been financially viable. It hasn't got any worse and the blooms are now largely weather dependant. Local farmers have reduced their phosphate application due to an EC directive and this is probably directly related to the decrease.

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Careful with herbicides. Years ago, I was a member of a club with a lovely little pond. Entirely covered in the floating leaves of water hawthorn, apart from where the swims had been cut out of it. Crystal clear water, great head of small tench and some lovely roach and rudd. The committee was made up of match anglers, and they didn't like weed, so they had it treated with aquatic herbicide. Turned into a muddy, algae-ridden puddle with no plant life at all, and was never really the same again.