Aquatic plants, whether desirable or undesirable, can quickly take over a pond or lake that has too many nutrients available. Nutrients are the main cause for excessive aquatic plant growth. Only a small amount of nutrients added to a pond can cause a lot of problems with aquatic plant growth.
Nutrients can be added to your pond in a number of ways, such as, leaves, grass clippings, wildlife waste, and runoff from lawns, cattle pastures, and farm fields all add a large amount of nutrients to your water. Once they reach the pond, they are available for plant growth.
It is important to look at the source of your ponds nutrients and try to get a handle on that while you are working on the immediate problem with aquatic plants. The treatments that are discussed on this page can be costly as well as labor intensive and strenuous. If you do not take any steps toward correcting the nutrient problem in your pond, these treatments will have to be an ongoing task. You will just be treating the symptoms of the problem, which are the weeds, and not doing anything for the problem, which is excessive nutrients.
In the Nutrient Solutions page, you will see some detailed information on ways to prevent nutrients from entering your pond and getting rid of the nutrients already there. It is very important to limit the amount of nutrients that are entering your pond; otherwise, the aquatic weed problem will be there every year.