jean Is there any chance you could take a picture and post it? I'm sure you know that anything we say without a picture is just a guess. I love trying to ID bugs and often use this site. The link takes you to 13 pages of various beetles that are orange, and several of them have dark spots. The milkweed assassin bug is one of them. Maybe you can find your insect there and decide whether it's a pest or not with further research. If not, a picture would be very helpful.

PLEASE kill that area of the lawn. Use RoundUp. Are we serious? Now look.....everybody gets these situations, now and then. You got your basic nutsedge plant. One plant. You can kill it with RoundUp, and you can complain.....'Gee...I have a dead area, about the size of a half-dollar coin'....(Hey, life is tough all over). Or you can wait. I mean, after all, one can't just create half-dollar sized dead patches, probably blonde in color, here and there in the lawn, right? Of course not. So three weeks later, the patches are the size of an open newspaper. Gee, what do we do about that? Well, we can wait, can't we? And watch that patch get to, well, how big? The size of a pup tent? The size of a kid's swimming pool? And what will we do THEN? Did somebody say 'wait'? No. Grassy weeds are the bane of every lawn guy's existence. They are a pain in the buttski. Broad leaf weeds are SOOOO EASY....and grassy weeds are not. But something is going right, over there. Something is right enough, that that plant can make it. Make it? Hey, babe, that plant is going to THRIVE.....and when it does, you're not going to like it. Kill it. Now. RoundUp. The only serious question is, 'Do you wanna fix a bare spot, or do you wanna fix a bigger bare spot?'

Hi Pf, thank you, i am not sure if those are native here in central, fl. from what ive read they are primarily in northern states? I could be wrong, im in learning mode about native fish. from what of most ive read so far says that many fish have become widespread though, so its veery possible. I saw pics and wondered myself. I was looking at them a few minutes ago with the 3 cell maglight and they have blue, with green speckles all over them when the light hits them just right. there are many colors to these fish. I am not sure if they are all the same type (probably given the restriction of the small pond) or whether there are two or three. ive tried to get better pics with a bright halogen lamp but i just cant get that camera to get a crisp enough pic. this is the best one so far that i have after many tries, but i will keep trying.

That's one of the many leaf-roller caterpillars. Messy, aren't they? And yes, the dark pellets are frass (insect poop). The adults will be a rather plain moth...and that's when the egg laying comes in. Those teeny babies nicely pictured in that one image hatched from eggs laid on that leaf. If you learn to look for the small eggs and remove them, you'll not have the caterpillars. Bt can be used to control this caterpillar pest, though it is not particularly effective when they are at the large stage. It's most helpful on the little guys. Bt is relatively safe to use (some people have allergic reaction), and is easily washed off. These (and other) caterpillars have a very wide array of natural predators and parasites to help you keep them under control. Rather than cutting away branches and tons of leaves, just remove the caterpillars. They don't sting or bite. And do an egg search. Attached is a fact sheet about the specific leaf-roller I believe yours to be. Florida is one of the many states in which it is found. The squiggly lines pictured in a couple of your images are from leaf miners, very commonly found in tomatoes. Simply remove affected leaves....or just ignore them. They rarely do enough damage to cause problems for the crop. Here is a link that might be useful: Click here