Excel for herbicide control of Egeria and Hydrilla

[Tom Barr]

I am doing a small pilot study to see how well Excel can kill Hydrilla and Egeria but not kill Potamogeton.

The algae killing is fine, no one really cares too much about that, Pondweeds(Potamogetons) are often rare natives in many states, but will get weedy in some cases.

Generally Egeria is a pretty bad weed ansd methods to kill it and not harm the other organism is often sought after.

Seachem's Excel is well tested in terms of toxicology with some 200 plant species and many fish, shrimp, and other aquatic biota within the 2x concentration recommended dosing.

I added the plants to 3.5 gal containers and added 2 sopecies of pondweed and Egeria and will dose once a day at 0= control, 1x, 2x dose suggestions.
Water column is EI, plain sand, 100umols/m^2/sec light.

Many have said that Excel kills and melts Egeria densa.
So I want to see if we can use this for weed mangement.

Copper has issues for weed control, but Excel breaks down into harmless by products and does not bioaccumulate, nor is it toxic to agricultural crops that use the water supply that's being treated.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[aquabillpers]

Re: Excel for herbicide control of Egeria and Hydrilla

Good luck on this study!

I hope it produces something that can be applied on a wide scale.

Many of the smaller bays on Lake Ontario in New York and elsewhere are made useless for just about anything by summer infestations of Potamogeton crispus (curly-leaf pondweed) and Myriophyllum spicatum (Eurasian watermilfoil), both non-native, invasive species. If you could come up with a way to contol those plants that was economically and politically acceptable, you would be a hero and probably become rich.

Bill

 

[Tom Barr]

Re: Excel for herbicide control of Egeria and Hydrilla

Well, the Milfoil I am working with as well as Egeria and Hydrilla.
We have it in Lake Tahoe.

But they will not let us treat it and instead want to do nothing while it takes over the entire lake and destroy's it.

They do want to allow one herbicide small treatment where the infestation is(ever at all, never etc), divers cannot remove it all.
But what happens when you have weed and do nothing?
It cost 1000X more and it become far more difficult to eradicate.

Environmentalist are often very stupid in their long range thinking, they assume that a small amount of herbicide to kill the weed for a few weeks will be somehow be better than the 1000's of boats that leak oil into the water there, and all the development around the lake.............

They scream very very loudly about us, folk that are trying to stop the weeds, but hardly say much about the boating lobby.
Oil takes a long time to breakdown, the herbicides breakdown into CO2 and water in a few days.

But I'm doing the ultrasound which has no regulations and residuals left over and hopefully that will get around the red tape and intense politics(Both sides of Tahoe, NV and CA).

But it'll be 1-2 years away.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[vidiots]

Re: Excel for herbicide control of Egeria and Hydrilla

I would say from my limited experience with accidently killing aquarium plants with excel, that you would have to kill it all or it would just rapidly grow back once you discontinue the excel. I was only using excel at the recommended doses, so it took me a period of several months to kill off all of the Egeria densa and 98% of the hornwort. Once I discontiuned the excel the 2% of hornwort that survived began to grow faster than I've ever seen hornwort grow.

I would also think that if you were to try using this on small ponds with few sources of weed introduction you might be successful. I don't know how well you would do on a larger body of water with many more sources. With the larger bodies you'd probably have to treat it nearly all summer long in the northern climates, and possibly twice per year in the southern climates.

 

[Tom Barr]

Re: Excel for herbicide control of Egeria and Hydrilla

Control vesus eradication are two different situations.
If I got 98% death, that would nice, then I could use less Diquat, maybe 1/8 as much to finish off or spot kill the remaining weeds.

So it does not have to kill off 100%, that'd be nice though
!!

Using combos of herbicides works well.
Agent orange is a mix of 3 different herbicides, the one that causes all the health issues is not used and many like to say 2,4 D is part of Agent Orange even though it's not the active ingrediant that causes the health issues.
2,4 D is used for water Hyacinth and has little effect on aquatic life and last a couple of days.

Nothing like some environmentalist misinformation

The state of CA tested this and showed this after several years after a lawsuit by some environmental groups.
But they wanted to claim that the independent montioring groups fudged the data and needed oversight on top of the over sight already in place from the independent monitoring and the state's own monitoring plan

Yes, some huge conspiracy. All to stop these weeds, which BTW, cause far more environmental damage than what they wanted folks to do, nothing.

No treatment options are about as stupid as you can get.



Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Wet]

Re: Excel for herbicide control of Egeria and Hydrilla

Is there an effective herbicide for Uticularia species? Thank you.

 

[matpat]

Hey Tom,

Have you looked into gluteraldehyde as a cheap substitute for Excel? One of the SWOAPE members has recently given it a try in his tanks and it seems to be doing well so far.

Here is the
thread if you want to take a look at it. I know you don't visit APC anymore but comments here or over there would be appreciated.

 

[nursie]

Seachem's Excel is well tested in terms of toxicology with some 200 plant species and many fish, shrimp, and other aquatic biota within the 2x concentration recommended dosing.

this is not relating to your question, but can you point me to a reference for what Excel is toxic? Thanks.