Hi Mike, It is always better to start the system up early unless you are in an area where the pond might thaw out but your weather can and does go back down into the single digits for the next 6 weeks. A week in the single digits is no big deal. Once you start the pond back up do not shut it off just because you may get a little cold weather. Yes keeping the pond going as long as you can in the fall can be a good thing but at that time of the year the weather can change for the worse and stay that way all winter. Shutting the pond then can be hard to do or you can get ice damming. In the fall if you can run the pond and bypass the waterfall the better. In the spring you can run the waterfall if you like. As far as water changes go I would like everyone to do water changes once in the while during the winter. If you are in a climate that your pond gets cold then I suggest not taking water out but putting new water by letting it flow over the ice and into the hole in the ice. Let the pond over fill and over flow. Changing 10% of the water a month will go along ways with the fish. You do want to dechlor the water if necessary. Do not put the hose directly into the water but let the water flow in. Mike

Well, in case anyone is interested here is an update and typical of how it goes for the feeder fish. In the above ground 35 gallon the racoons moved the plastic plant around afew times until they finially tore it apart completely. I took it out of the pond and threw it away. It wasn't a very good idea anyway. I have not added any fish to that pond but there is certainly no overload left. Even though the feeder goldfish were really SMALL, they must not have been small enough. Only one left as the others slowely dissapeared. I suspect them to have been racoon dinner. Of the rosey red minnows, they have dwindled in number also. The ones showing color are almost gone. However, I did put some of the dark "rosey reds" in there that were mixed when I bought them that were black, no color. They all seem to be still there. All this leads me to believe that the fish dissapear as the result of becomming racoon dinner. The water is quite clear as I can see all the way to the bottom. Pond in heavy shade with no plants and no filtration. I do partial water changes about weekly by putting the hose on bottom and letting floating gunk spill over.

Thanks Glenda for the offer...never been to Florida. Your fish must be large if are in the pond all year. Still havn't seen that black koi but tomorrow plan on finish cleaning the edges of the pond and refilling it. Will have to put dechlor in pond before cleaning as town water treated with both chloramines and chlorine. I do miss my fish in the winter as used to keep them in the basement. A 400 gal tank (with filter) is just too big too much humidity for the basement and I would need too big of an aquarium to house them inside. Didn't lose any in the transfer and am feeding them once a day in the garage until the water temp gets colder. The only problem with doing that is water changes as have no outlet in the garage and can't use garden hose because of the tap water thing. So it will be 5 gal buckets but should only have to do it a couple of times before winter hits and the temp drops. Have fun enjoying your pond! Patti

Alberta and Saskatchewan had Family Day, I think that both of them call it, before. Manitoba has named their day after Louis Riel, a French-Metis guy in the West who wanted some regional autonomy and the gov't. fixed him and his few guys in a small battle in N. Sask. in '85. No idea how many killed, but it wasn't very many. They hung Louis Riel. We'd had another tiny revolution in Ontario and Quebec in 1837. I'd said a while ago that we hadn't had international military battles in N. America N. of the Alamo for 190 years, or within one country for 140, referring to that as the most recent. But our battle was really the last, 120 years ago in 1885 ... and it was so small that I forgot about it. The Ontario government declared a new holiday in February, Family Day (to promote "Family Values", I guess, including family-like assemblies based on same-sex couples), after they'd won an election last year. So now there's a holiday in the four contiguous provinces from Ontario to Alberta on that day. The Alberta holiday, governed by a more Conservative group, with an election in the offing, has defined "family" a bit more narrowly, I think. About 40% of the people in those areas, for various reasons, had to be at work today/yesterday ... but many of the workers had trouble, for their day care providers were on holiday. At least some Toronto civic workers were on duty - they had a lot of snow to move. Just a regular old holiday, same as every other day, for us retirees. Well, not exactly - quite a few stores closed, and provincial govt. offices (but Fed. workers, as (Susan?) reported, were on duty). One Federal political leader said that they should make it a Canada-wide holiday. Some said that such an eventuality is a bit remote, for Canada's productivity is much lower than in the U.S., that the rise in value of our dollar has hurt our manufacturing industries, and though we've had 8 statutory holidays and U.S. workers 13 ... they think that there's little chance of expanding our numbers for a while. Hope you all find some interesting and memorable things in the rest of this week. ole joyful