Surface water sources on farms are notoriously difficult to keep clean. Water weeds, algae blooms and other plant growth are constant concerns. And when those plants die and sink to the bottom, their decomposition produces foul water and other issues.
Doug Millar has lived with water concerns for years. He runs a 100 head commercial beef operation and until recently had a fish farming business, hatching out 60,000 rainbow and brook trout every two months, near St. Paul, Alta.
“I was running a fish farm and we have a lot of problems with pond weeds in the summer. They can interfere with raising fish, but it also makes winterkill a problem. We’ve been looking at different ways of controlling our pond weeds. We’ve tried grass carp and other things.”
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Millar had seen blue coloured ponds on golf courses. He discovered it was due to a blue dye, added to the water, that stops photosynthesis in pond weeds and certain strains of algae.
“I had seen it in one of our aquaculture catalogues. We bought some and tried it out on a farm pond, then one of our trout ponds and we were really happy with the way it worked. We used to rake a lot of our algae off. It stopped that completely.”
Millar said the dye is sold as a lake colourant.
“It’s not a chemical treatment and it’s not a herbicide treatment. All it does is make the water blue. With the water being blue, it prevents blue light from penetrating to that plant, so that plant is not able to photosynthesize.”
He said the treatment is effective on algae and weeds.
“Any of the weeds that have to grow from the bottom of the pond, grow through a column of water and up to the surface, will be affected. Clasping leaf pondweed and other types will need photosynthesis to grow. When you’ve got something like a bullrush, which is rooted on the side and comes up above the water, it’s not affected by this,” said Millar.
“Some of the algaes, there’s a long hair-like algae that grows on the bottom of the pond and comes up in sheets, that is controlled with this product. It does a really good job on that.”
Millar said the dye is sold as a dry product. An eight ounce bag treats a quarter of a million gallons.
“It’s in a water dissolvable bag. You throw the bag on the dugout, it dissolves and the dye disperses in the water. You come back the next day, your pond is blue.”
According to Millar, water bodies only need one treatment per year.
“Normally in the springtime, before your plants get actively growing, if you do your treatment then, you’re done for the year. You will get a little bit of pond growth late in the season, but by that time your major growth window is done,” he said.
For a while, Millar simply bought the product and used it on his own farm. But now he has decided to sell it, as well.
“A lot of people were picking up their fish and seeing our pond was blue. They said, ‘that looks good, give me some.’ We ended up with a lot of customers buying it, so we thought we might as well start selling it. There are a lot of ponds out there that don’t have fish in them but still have these same problems that people would like to control.”
It costs $30 for a bag of dry product that treats a quarter of a million gallons.
He said with the liquid product, shipping costs are too high. He has used the liquid product but felt it didn’t work as well and application was more difficult.
Millar said the dye is safe for fish, ducks and livestock. He said it’s even safe to swim in. For more information, call 780-724-2002, fax 780-724-2004 or e-mail millar12@telusplanet.net.
