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digger, the first year or two we had a pond, we were delighted that the toads used it to spawn in. We made a floating,nursery basket to keep the toad tadpoles from being eaten by the fish and we were thrilled to see the little toad-lets eventually take off into their new world, our garden and farther afield, to feed on all the pesky insects that chew up our flowers and plants. What I did not count on was, that the following years those precious little toad-lets, now mature, would return to their Garden of Eden to beget more spawn, from which commeth more toads to beget, prosper and multiply again and again, until the noise from hundreds of them, begetting and singing their praises all night long in the spring, would have awakened the dead. I have transported gallons of spawn, heaps of tadpoles and hundreds of adult toads to a nature area near us. Where they can beget to their little heart's content and sing happily all night without bothering me or my neighbours. Toads are much hardier and are surviving at a better rate, than their cousins the frogs, in to-days poisoned environment. With the upsurge in garden water features and the protection they afford to these amphibians, toads have a greater chance of survival and multiplying. Again, like a number of other pond related subjects, it is up to the individual pond owner to decide what is in or out, what they want or don't want, in their personal little Eden's. For me a couple of toads in and around my pond, is fine, as long as they are both of the same sex. :) I don't want to go through all that noise and transporting again. "Horton"

You are fortunate you can have tropical's outdoors. I am happy with my goldies and koi (especially since the larger ones were given to us) and happy to have them breeding. I must also say we somehow got bluegill bream in the long end (we have an upper circle with a fountain and waterfall which feeds into the long end and all is creek-fed from springs on our farm. The long end does drain back into the creek in a trickle about four feet long so it would have been impossible for them to swim up that incline. Either birds dropped them or ??. Anyway, they also seem to have now two or three small ones I assume they spawned. The large area of parrots feather in the long end have several babies of some distraction swimming among their fronds, again, I assume baby goldies although it could be a mixture of bream fry and goldfish. Amazing to me! And there are also tons of teensy, bright white dots which I'm wondering whether those are eggs?!

Hi Gary, It's been such a crazy summer for me that I've only been able to lurk occasionally and haven't posted much. Below is a thread from a few weeks ago on the same topic that includes more detailed instructions from Horton along with a few other suggestions. If I had read that thread earlier, I would have added my support to Jenny's post about "Gil", her bluegill. Since we put our bluegill in about 3 years ago, the number of goldfish fry that make it to adulthood has decreased dramatically. We have a relatively large pond (30'x15')with lilies and other plants that provide great hiding places for babies, and this is what has worked for us. The only places that will take goldfish in our area is bait shops, and that wasn't an option I even wanted to consider! "Marty" the bluegill is now about 8" long and doesn't bother the larger goldfish or koi, unless they get too close to his "nest" that he makes each summer. He follows me around the pond hoping a grasshopper will either jump in or that I'll have a nice big grub worm for him. :-) If I'd known at the time, I would have quarantined the bluegill before I added him to our pond. None of our fish became sick or died, so we lucked out, but I now know that it's better not to take that chance. Another really good piece of advice I DID follow from this forum is to only get ONE bluegill or you will end up with more bluegill than goldfish and defeat the whole purpose. :-) Good luck with whatever method of control you decide to use. Sherry Here is a link that might be useful: Keeping fish population down