I don't know how you can get the fish to stop eating the roots. I've given up on growing water hyacinth and water lettuce for this same reason.

Maybe you could take some of the parrots feather out of the pond and grow it in something like a kiddy pool. It grows so fast that you might be able to get enough of it so that when you put it back into the pond there will be too much for the fish to eat it all. This year my parrots feather has taken over the pond and even though I've read that koi like to eat it my koi haven't even made a dent in it.

Thank you for the response! Mine was looking great and fluffy in the spring and then . ....kaput. It has put roots up on the ground so I am hoping that after the spawning and egg laying is over (whenever that may be) it will recover. I hope. It is now a great place, evidently for algae growth. Not sure what to do about that either. I don't grow water hyacinth because while it dies out in the winter here, our pond feeds back into the creek which goes directly into the North Tyger River and on down tto the S.C. Intercoastal Waterway where it doesn't die off and is a real problem. I try to be 'good'. Yet, my efforts are not rewarded! LOL!

Joraines,
Sorry about the fish that are making their way into your pond, mabey some kind of a net to stop them? Where the creek runs through your pond? There must be some kind of a net, or even weed cloth or something even a leaf net to stop the fish from entering. How to anchor it is another thing.
Nice to hear from you, I've been keeping up with your pond stories, it's nice to hear someone from our state speak about their pond.
There is a fine to own water hyacinth in South Carolina, but not water lettuce as far as I know.
I don't know what Parrot feather is, it sounds nice, hope you can grow it out a bit in another baby pool so you still have it for the rest of the year, it'll probably last here til at least the beginning of November.
I think all the rain lately is the culprit of the algae, although thankfully my pond is finally starting to clear a bit now since the rain has stopped, (now I jinxed myself), I have never seen this much rain.
Good luck with your pond and hope you figure something out as to keeping the fish out.

Last year the Parrots Feather was really thick but I had only Comet varieties. This year after it failed to grow at all I put most of it in the top of the Skippy where it has grown lush. Maybe the 3 koi I added had something to do with it. I gave up lilies with koi. They didn't last long enough to spend the money. Hyacinth lasted a bit longer but I seldom get to see it bloom. Mostly I depend on taros and papyrus for the pond shelves and everything else goes into a Skippy.

Our pond is only fed by creek water with a pump so it doesn't feed directly into it. People have said the bluegil's may come in from birds carrying the eggs but even last year, they were just in there as big as my hand and it was the first year we had it up and going! So, that's a mystery. Build it and they will come. At the long end, it trickles over river rocks back into the pond but they can't come up that incline. This has been such an unusual year weather wise with all of the rain and lack of heat and sun (both my Castor Beans and Angels Trumpets are not as tall as I think they normally would be, for example), I am chalking it all up to a really weird weather year and hoping the parrots feather recovers!