Water Hyacinth with Goldfish
By: Naia
In the big tub outside I put some water hyacinth in with my huge comet The Haifisch (aka Mr. Shark) and it sloshes merrily away next to the pond pump. I haven’t seen any indication that it’s slowed down either by subsurface munching or the pump’s surface action. The biggest problem with the plant is that you have to keep hacking it back to stop it from covering everything — it didn’t get on the Global Invasive Species Database for nothing. It does eat up nitrates like a charm, though. And yes, the flowers are pretty, and emerge from the plant with amazing speed. The Missouri Botanical Garden has a really nice website with information for home gardeners on growing conditions for a wide variety of plants, maybe you’re already familiar with it? If you’re interested in gardening in general it’s well worth taking a look at. (I have it bookmarked on my computer, and I don’t even live anywhere near Missouri.) In case anyone is interested, here’s a link with their advice on how to grow water hyacinths in that part of the world:
Kemper Center for Home Gardening
I should add that when I put the hyacinth into my tub I constructed a sort of floating “planter” to protect the plant — initially, at least — from the goldfish. If you pull your water hyacinth out of the water to check its health and don’t find a big ugly mass of black hairy roots underneath, you might try putting some kind of barrier between the plant and the fish. There are floating planters for sale on the Internet but they are ridiculously expensive. The koi/goldfish pond man who gave me the plant suggested the following alternative: I took a piece of 1″ thick PVC pipe and bent it into a circle, using a plastic pipe fitting to sandwich the two ends together. Then I hung a 1/4″ soft plastic mesh net off of the circle and sewed it into a cylinder with fishing line, finally catching the bottom of the net into a big knot and stuffing it upwards to keep it away from the fish. The PVC floats and the mesh sinks (especially when you put a rock into the bottom of it); you drop the apparatus into the water and then you drop the plant into the center.
It’s not natural in any sense of the word, but it did what it was supposed to do. I imagine there’s a possibility that a determinedly self-destructive goldfish could injure himself on the net but though I worried a lot at the beginning, it didn’t happen here. The plant has long since put roots outside of the net in every direction but up, and I don’t think Mr. Shark could reach the net now even if he tried.