Irrigation Issues with Snails, Mussels and the WaterSOLV Solution

A Tale of Two Todds: How a Florida Superintendent and Arizona Innovator Are Using Unconventional Chemistry to Address a Prolific Shell Problem

April 2025

Todd Eden - HCT Principal

Todd Draffen - Director of Ag

Vernon Jones - HCT Dealer Representative Plant Health Solutions

Todd Draffen 

My name is Todd Draffen and I'm with the Old Collier Golf Club in Naples, FL.

Todd Eden

And how long have you been there?

Todd Draffen   

I was here in the construction from 2000 to 2007 and I went down to the South part of Naples and built TPC Treviso Bay. I was there for seven years and then in 2015 came back here and have been here for the past 10 years.

My title is Director of Agronomy. A little bit of history about myself; I grew up in Dayton, OH, and wanted to be working outside so I got a wildlife degree from Purdue. I couldn't find a degree or job that I wanted but loved golf. My dad convinced me to go back to Ohio State and get my agronomy degree from Ohio State and then in 1998 the good Lord blessed me and introduced me to my former boss. His name was Tim Hiers, and he interviewed me, brought me down, and I've been down here for the past 27 years. So that's sort of a summary of my career down here in South Florida.

Todd Eden 

That's awesome. So, Todd, tell us about your journey with shells from how long you've been fighting them, what's been going, what you've done, et cetera.

Todd Draffen  

We've probably noticed the shells here on our property for 15 plus years. And initially they were mainly just in our wet well in the pump station. We would see a few clogged heads occasionally, but not too often, not too bad. And we tried multiple different things. Initially it was just dumping some chlorine in our wet well, trying to control those. Then we started adding some acid products into the wet well.

Probably 15 years ago we upgraded to a chlorinating sort of like a circulation pump inside of our wet well and it goes out into our screen out into the irrigation lake. We go through probably, I don't know, 50 of those chlorine tablets a month. Doing that circulation system and that process has really helped keep the wet well clean.

But over those 15 years, we've noticed that the mussels and the shells in our lakes are growing inside the lines and clogging the heads. And so we've just always battled it by flushing the heads out, we've now started doing some copper sulfate trying to flood our main line and some of our laterals trying to control, not maybe not even control, just trying to kill them, just do a shock treatment inside of our irrigation lines and and that's hard to gauge cause how do you tell where all that stuff goes? So it just gets in there one time and you clean it out. So we've never had very good success. 

Until a few years ago, or I don't know, not even a few years ago, six months ago, I guess that I heard about your system and your products. And so that's how we got to where we are today.

Todd Eden   

And what about potassium permanganate? Did you try that?

Todd Draffen 

I did not really try it because I used it at my house. I had well water and that stuff. I hated that stuff. It gets purple stuff all over you and I just didn't want to mess with that stuff, so I never played with it.

Todd Eden  

Yeah, a lot of people go that route, but they kind of find the same thing. It's like chlorine. It's a shock. Then you wait for the problem to present itself again and it's just a constant battle. So, you invested in our program and at a point you called and said this is not doing it for me.

Todd Draffen 

I'd say four weeks in, we kept seeing clogged heads out into the field. We were seeing a small percentage increase in less activity, but we were still having enough where it was causing us problems. So we made the phone call and determined we needed to change the chemistry a little bit. So we increased one of the percentages on the, I think it was the hydrogen peroxide. We increased the first time. We did that for a month or so and then we were still having some issues. So we changed that and then increased the acid. And then shortly thereafter, we determined it was another product of the acetic acid needed to be added in and we started adding that in and I think we're going down the good road now with what we're seeing.

We're still seeing some problems, but they're not as many and it's not as frequent. So do they still cause us problems? Yeah, we're still having some issues.

Now let me take a step back and I'll sort of explain. We had Hurricane Ian in 2022. We had a storm surge across the whole golf course. So our Lakes went from a semi saline solution product to a highly saline lake system where my lakes were about 12 to 15,000 parts per million salts.

I think I got a little bit of a reprieve because right after that our chemistry changed in our irrigation water and our lake water and our groundwater and I started seeing a different problem. It was not a mussel, it was a snail. It was still a shell product. And so then I think I sent you some pictures. 

We've had multiple different species of mussels and shells and problems over the years. The main one that we've had, I've sent it to the University of Florida, had them identified and it's called a dark false mussel and it lives in a brackish water salinity, dark, a dark false mussel. It's sort of a second or third cousin to the zebra mussel up north. And I'm sure there, I'm sure there's all kinds of different varieties and species of mussels out there. 

So in 2022 that's when we had a little bit of a break, but I think it was mainly due to our salt water intrusion because then as soon as we got that next summer rainy flush season and our lakes cleaned out, then problems almost exploded back to the normal, even if not more of that same muscle shell problem. 

But let's jump forward to week four of treatment; 3 or four of the acetic acid and then the hydrochloric acid mixed.

So we have been getting rain and so we have not been irrigating as much. Like right now we haven't had rain for about four or five days. So we're still cycling our irrigation through there, but for about a week we had about four or five inches and I didn't have to run anything for a while. So my clogged heads and my dry spots are a little bit harder to identify right now just due to the fact.

The rainy season’s here, but I'm hoping once we get back into our normal irrigation cycle, I don't see as many problems. It's probably been, I'd say, at least two weeks since we've had to flush a totally clogged head. Now we've seen that, we've seen a few heads that don't have the accurate pressure, but they're not totally clogged. So that's why I think we're going down this correct Rd. to to solve our problem, but it's a slow process for us.

Todd Eden   

Good. Yeah, it is. It is. You know, you're cleaning here, but you're also trying to maintain agronomy there, right? So it's a balance. So are you, I think we mentioned that even though, you know, let's just say it rains for a month, we still want you to kind of charge that line once a week and so are you still doing that?

Todd Draffen  

Correct. Yeah, we'll get two or three days of rain and so I don't have to irrigate for a day or two. But then that third day or second or third day past it, we're still 95 degrees and it's blazing hot. So our rain water does not carry us but more than a day or two. We're still every 3rd or 4th or 5th day we're turning the cycler system back on and and running.

Todd Eden  

So what about your vegetation and soil? Is it looking better?

Todd Draffen   

Well, I would say yes, but at the same time, we’ve got very poor quality water. Our salinity is extremely high. So during the dry season, as soon as our rainy season starts. The whole golf course looks better just because of the natural rain water. So we beat the course up and then let it heal and beat it back up and then let it heal and beat it back up. But overall yes, I think.

I have not seen any issues with native and or plants around the golf course with the products and our dry spots have become fewer.

And we just got done aerifying last week, so the course right now is all beaten up. So give us about another two weeks, 3 weeks and we'll be all back healed up and probably looking phenomenal.

Todd Eden

Did you, did you notice the tines going into the ground easier?

Todd Draffen   

I would say yes, there. We've got a few spots, a couple holes, a couple our driving ranges have some very poor quality soil. Coming out of the dry season, we didn't see as much stress out in some of those areas that we normally do. So I think it is helping.

Todd Eden 

And that's all just moisture in the main root zone and in a deeper root zone. So you got more root to sustain that environment. 

I'm a real advocate of copper chelate because it's a more soluble form and what we learned is that sulfate reducing bacteria likes sulfur and sulfate, that's what it feeds on. And so you throw the copper out and you hope it's doing a job but if the copper's not in an ionic form, then it's a precipitate. It's just hanging around there, right? And so it's not actually getting into the muscle and being consumed, and then you're giving it the food source that's in ionic form, which it can consume instantly.

So we tell a lot of people to oxygenate their pond because they don't like oxygen and so that helps deter their growth. And then use a copper chelate and keep sulfur and sulfate out of that pond. Keep it out of your water. 

By having copper in your water, having copper in your soil, the use of both those products are going to make that ionic copper and it's going to be super effective. 

It's interesting when we look at soils how much is zinc and copper we find accumulated in the soil. I mean it's like 3500 concentrations of their source water, OK or the fungicides, which are usually zinc based, right? Well, most of the fungicides sitting in the soil are zinc. It's not ionic. The plant's not drinking it or the OR the mollusk isn't drinking it. So you know it's kind of like when you do a a pH, you know you when you add acid to water and and water soil you get this push of growth but it's the salts that the plant doesn't drink that when they evaporate to dryness, they become a denser crystal that the acid won't break down, so they build up in the soil, causing the physical properties of the soil to become compromised because it's saturated with fertilizer that’s consuming pore space. 

So our work is to acidify those crystals and then sequester them so they stay ionic. And when they dry, they dry to a powder, and when you add water, the powder goes back into an ionic form for the plant to drink, which gives you physical properties like infiltration rate and depth. 

Well, I think we covered it all except the crazy story about Andrew and you know, two months into the program, his shells are gone. And so on my phone call to the two of you, I asked Vernon first. I said, are they in an arid environment of Florida? And Vernon says, yeah. And I said, so is Todd in the swampy area of Florida? He goes, yeah. And then you look at the shells. You got a nice calcareous shell up in Kissimmee, and you got this mucky, slimy thing that you can't even hold in your hand in your area and that's that darn biofilm. 

So all we did, all we did was added another product, the acetic acid to our acid to help the BC in the acid breakdown the massive biofilm on that shell so the acid could get to the shell and start dissolving it. That's all we did. And so hopefully three or four months from now you can say that the problem’s resolved. 

Todd Draffen 

I hope so, yeah.

Todd Eden   

Stop feeding the pond. Attack the embryos at the wet well. They'll never be able to make a shell. They can't make a shell out of our material. Once we modify those salts, they cannot build a shell. So you're going to be putting out a little organic matter, the little embryos going through the strainers now.

Todd Draffen 

Can you send me a little more information on that chelated copper and how that works in a lake or aquatic setup?

Todd Eden 

Yeah. So it's just a copper in that EDTA instead of with the sulfur. And I mean you can buy it online.

Todd Draffen 

Do you have rates or how would I know how much?

Todd Eden 

We could calculate it and you may have enough copper in your water, OK, that's doing the trick. And then if we have a lot in the soil, we're going to be releasing it there, but we're not treating the water with it, right? So I'll make a note and I'll dive into that for you and I'll send you something.

Todd Draffen 

Right. OK. Thank you.

Todd Eden 

OK. All right.

Todd Draffen

Is there any other type of product? Instead of like a copper that would be nutrient based for the plant.

Todd Eden

I don't. You know, if you're putting out curative and BC and we've got that trace amount of copper and maybe trace amount of zinc, OK. And then, you know, we're focused on the soils to make sure that the elements in the soil aren't excessive.

And that they're there for, you know, for us to react with and for the plant to drink, then we're golden. You know, typically what people think is I add fertilizer, I get a response. If I keep adding fertilizer, I'm going to get a response.

But what they don't realize is usually 70% of that fertilizer is accumulating in the soil. So core airfine top dress, you're fixing a hole instead of four inches of soil all the time, right? So.

Conventionally people continue to fertilize instead of making their water function better to make what's in their soil available to maintain pore space and infiltration. And then and then the pond. It's like, will you swim in your pond? No.

And you won't swim in the pond cause it's gonna make you sick. But you expect your plants not to get sick drinking that stuff, right? So you have to, you have to deal with the anoxicity.

It's not only in the water, it's in the lines and filters and strainers, but it's also in the soil. That's where black layer comes from. That's where these swampy areas are. It's the accumulation of the salts and the bacteria and the bacteria produce all these waste.

It becomes muck; septic. So we got to keep everything aerobic, fight the skepticism and that's why you use something like BC and the curative just catalyzes that BC. And and of all things, every drop of water you put out is leaving behind dissolved oxygen with BC in it. You are chemically aerifying your soils.

Todd Draffen  

That was good. Yeah.

Todd Eden 

Drop the water and that's even when the bacteria consume the peroxide or the peroxide degrades the bacteria, the byproduct of hydrogen peroxide is dissolved oxygen.

Todd Draffen   

Right.

Todd Eden 

Yeah, good stuff. So Vernon, do you want to add anything?

Vernon 

No, I think we've covered everything. I think we're on the right track. I think we're definitely on the right track of getting him all cleared up a little more time. We'll be good to go.

Todd Eden

Awesome.

Vernon 

Yep.

Todd Draffen 

Got you. Very good.

Todd Eden 

It's an opportunity to help and that's what we do. We're extremely grateful that you took us under your wing and gave us the opportunity, and that you communicated with us when you had a problem.

Todd Draffen   

Fantastic.

Vernon 

Yeah, we love helping. 

Todd Eden 

And we honor that opportunity and your consideration.

Todd Draffen 

Well, hopefully we're almost there. I'm hoping, hopeful.

Todd Eden

Yeah, we'll get there. All right. All right, gentlemen. 

End of Interview

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