Hello! I will be signing up today! I am a newbie & have 10 acres to play with. I want to plant a garden for my family and plant flowers/bushes/trees on the property. also since we have a lot of land to use, we are also going to do a community garden. SEEDS/PLANTS/CUTTINGS/STARTS THAT I AM LOOKING FOR: I am looking for seeds/starts/cuttings of the following: Vegetable seeds:Heirloom & non heirloom: corn, carrots, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, beans, tomatoes,cantaloupe, pumpkins -all including white, sweet potatoes, potatoes, onion,zucchini, watermelon, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, anything else you can grow in a garden. FLOWERS: heirloom & non heirloom: Tropical plants that can be grown indoors, hibiscus-indoor & outdoor & various sizes, carnations (all colors), poppies (all colors), peonies (pink, white, yellow, purple, any/all colors) day lily ~ all colors & varieties, FRUIT & TREES: grape vines, raspberry, blueberry, strawberry starts, fruit tree starts: apple, peach, cherry, pear trees, Flowering Dog Wood, anything tree that can grow in Indiana. I look forward to being adopted!

I've already started reading through some of the posts as time allows. There's so much information and as I see the pictures of some of the ponds people have I find myself trying to figure out a feasible way to put a big pond in the back yard. I have the land for it, my house sits on a 3/4 acre lot with few trees, but coming up with the money and a way to do the work is another thing all together! There's a Harbor Freight not far from where I work so it will be easy to go check them out. I tried researching pumps online last night but quickly became confused. I'll be going to a plant swap in a few weeks and the host has offered me the books that she used when setting up her pond. I've forced myself to get over being squeamish when it comes to cuban tree frogs. The only reason I was skittish in the first place was because of their corpse like appearance. Give me a non-venomous snake, a lizard, or normal looking frog or toad and I'm more then happy to handle the creature. Whenever I see the cuban tree frogs I put them in a plastic bag and then into the freezer. The problem is that when young the cuban tree frogs look a lot like our native tree frogs. It's not until they get to the large pasty white stage that I can safetly tell the difference. The one good thing about the unusually cold winter we had this year here in florida is that a lot of the exotic pests couldn't hack the temperatures and died. it's only in the past week that I've seen any frogs, toads, or lizards and almost all of them have been of the native varieties. I would really prefer to not wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a cuban tree frog being tormented by my cats outside my bedroom door again. The thing sounded just like a kitten in distress!

I ditto tiller and others. Good advice from all so far. The only thing I would add about chemicals...is that there is one bottle of stuff you really should have, and that is a water treatment for Chlorine and Chlorimines. Chlorine is not that bad if you add less than 10-20% of your total amount at once. The fish can get Gill Burn if they play in the hose spray so put the hose in a area they can't get to. The chlorine will hurt your bacteria colonies in your bio filter but won't wipe em out. After a day or two contact with the air will dissipate the chlorine (it will go faster if you have an airator or waterfall). Chlorimines though are baaaad. They will never leave your pond without being treated with an additive. You can call your water company and see if they use chlorimines. If they do, then you need to get in the habit of using a neutralizer every water change. If they don't then you can get away without, unless you notice your plants being hurt by chlorine when you change the water. "Bad stuff" on the bottom are organic compounds like leaves, fish poop, dead fish etc. As it decomposes it will create a layer of mud called "muck". It's black and smells bad. If your pond ever has a sewer odor that's a sure sign that your muck has run amok and the fish are in danger. When this happens oxygen levels drop and you start getting brown algae and your water will look like rootbeer. Anaerobic bacteria start to go to work in the oxygen free environment. This is a fish death sentence. You should regularly scoop out the majority of the muck leaving as little as possible on the bottom after it settles back down. "Regularly" depends on your pond. More trees, dust, pollen, weaker filter etc mean you need to clean it up more or less than others. There is no rule about how often to clean. To clean out muck, you just need to scoop it out. You can do that by hand, with a bucket or shop vac. One thing I like is this little attachment that goes on the end of a garden hose. The flow of the hose water creates venturi suction that pushes the muck into a little nylon bag. Keep in mind that with any of these options you will stir up the muck and it will take a day or so to see improvement. If you do it regularly, the stirred up muck isn't a problem for the fish. But if you have a deep layer of it you might want to do what destany said above, and move the fish into a container for a bit (filled with pond water!) as all those bad compounds will be spiked during the clean. If your depth is closer to 3 feet I would still think about either getting rid of the goldfish (donate them to a pet store or other ponder) or the koi. With either 3 koi or 11 goldfish you have about the right fishload. But with both, you have about double what you will need in a year or so when they get big. If you are dead set on keeping all of them, you need to plan on losing some to stress or plan on getting a heavy duty biofilter and/or doing regular muck sweeping.

So many nay-sayers! All it takes is a large pocket book, (preferably inexaustable public funding)and a panel of experts to create a "natural enclosure". Ask your most local zoo! My opinion is it could be done, and with appropriate habitats for different species, BUT, it would be expensive and have to be large enough to provide room for the transition of habitats. You would also be adding LARGE amounts of risk to your pets. Predators, parasites, pathogens, and other microorganisms that you would have no control over. Your pets would also have no defense against them, (other than their shell) as they are not indigenous to your area. None the less, you "could do it". You would have to create a large sump either covered, or separated outside the perimeter of the enclosure. My first thought is a shallow stream, where a slow moving, (but enough flow to carry waste away) stream would drain into your sump area through a screen too small for your smallest pet to get through. (Maybe large holes cut into the side of a 55 gallon drum in a grid pattern.) That sump would need to be AT LEAST a 100 gallons, (not necessarily all in one container), and contain a prefilter, mechanical filter, and bio filter to treat your tortoise wastes. Since they would use it infrequently, (after all, they are tortoises)it would probably work fine to treat the water so long as it could get enough time to chemically breakdown, and balance. Your prefilter could be as simple as a mat of plant roots near the drain to the sump, or a settling chamber, which would also pre-treat the waste, while allowing the dirty water to flow through. Properly chosen, the plants would also provide a food source. You would pump from the sump, beyond all the filters, back up to the head of the stream area, and the water would carry wastes back to the sump through the drain system. Experimentation would be needed to set the water flow, then it would have to be adjusted as the plant growth varied. The automatic requirement is the most interesting part of your idea. THAT could get very expensive! Filter back washing to waste, chemical monitoring, water level, etc. is quite a design feat in itself! But if you are willing to monitor the water level, and run a hose a little every few days/weeks, it would not be too bad to have it manually operated. In fact the bigger the sump, and filters, the less attention it should need if designed right. A simple toilet valve could control water level for you, but the supporting infrastructure becomes an issue. Solar pumps are certainly available to move the amount of water you need to move, and most likely, move it often enough to keep the water healthy, depending on system loads. (size of pond exposed to sun, wind, and relative filter sizes, how many leaves get in, etc.) Just like your pets, water features need attention. So you know, there is no such thing as a maintenance free pond, just one that hasn't been maintained, or is not yet completely full of stuff. Nature puts things in, we take them out. We do this to keep the area a pond. In nature, the pond is always changing, and always filling with gunk, getting shallower and shallower all the time. What you proposed is certainly not a simple project. What other proposed is simpler and more practical. It certainly is cheaper, and less risky to use a large saucer, and unless you are willing to create a large water sump, a lot less headaches! You have easy control over the quality and quantity of the water in the saucer, and simple disinfection with a weak bleach solution provides a micro guard. When you decided to take on pets, you decided to devote a portion of your life to their care. If you want them to live in a natural area, you will need to return them to their native lands and set them free. Other than that, continue to care for them daily. They deserve your attention! And you benefit from providing for them. Heck, they're tortoises, you only have about 25-100 years to take care of them! Buck up! -TT