Grass carp are a tool, not part of a standard stocking. Their one job is weed control: they graze down nuisance vegetation, giving you a natural, chemical-free way to manage a weedy pond.
We recommend that you only stock them if you actually have a weed problem. They are voracious vegetarians that will eat beneficial plants that shelter and feed your other fish.
They are also picky. Grass carp readily eat soft submerged weeds like hydrilla and pondweed, but they largely ignore tougher, emergent plants like cattails, water lilies. They will only eat filamentous algae if they are starving and there's nothing else to eat.
To know if grass carp are the right tool for the job, you should identify your weed first and make sure it's something that they will eat. If you're not sure, send us a photo, and we will help you identify the plant.
We stock sterile triploid grass carp, which are unable to reproduce. The stocking rate for grass carp depends on how bad the weeds are, from a few per acre for light growth up into the teens for heavy growth. Grass carp live a long time and get big, so stock conservatively. It's recommended to start small and add a few more later. Otherwise, you may be dealing with an overstocked pond of hungry carp that have wiped out all your vegetation.
