Thanks for your response sleepless. It looks like I will be scooping some snails out of the pond today. We are lucky enough to have a pretty nice aquatic store within a few miles of us. I noticed while shopping for plants and such, when you pulled up a pot there were numerous fish swimming amongst the plants. When I brought them home I found the jelly type stuff on some of the pots. Not knowing what they might be...frogs, fish or something else I might not have picked on my own, I wiped it off before putting in the pond. With that said, from the pics of minnows I have looked up, they are not the same body shape. One is a longer, thinner body that is orange, white and a little black. The others are brown with a lighter underbelly and have the same body shape of...maybe a blue gill. In others words, I have no idea what they are :) I have pics, but have not figured how to add them to a post yet. Again, thanks for the help!

I think many children can be trained to not touch something you don't want them to touch. Starting when they're little (say around a year or so, give or take a few mos.), we teach them, "HOT, don't touch." A cup of coffee or tea can be helpful for this. Babies are naturally curious and want to see what mom or dad is drinking. We take their hand and put it to the side of the mug (when it's hot enough to be uncomfortable; not hot enough to burn.) Then we look the baby in the eye and say, "Hot. Don't touch. HOT." Reality can a very good teacher, especially when used by a parent to educate a child in a safe manner. Waiting until a 2 year old is ramming through the kitchen at an open stove door is not the time you want to educate them. But if children already practiced the "hot" lesson on the coffee mug, and you've explained when you are using the stove, that it's hot, the pots and pans are hot, see the steam-it's HOT, I'm turning the handle in because the pot is hot, stand back while I drain this HOT pot. . . many accidents can be prevented. One of our six is more "bull-headed" than the rest seem to be. He thought it was fun to get some little burns from our wood stove. We happen to have a friend who years ago burned over 80% of his skin from a jet fuel accident. When I asked him one day, he very graciously showed some of his burned skin(normally covered by his sleeves) to our children and explained how those burns have changed his life. Seeing someone in this way really helped drive home a lesson I was having a hard time getting across to our Mr. Experimental. We too, have our children cooking in the kitchen along side us. They love to help, and are learning to use knives and appliances as they grow. Yes, there have been a few minor burns, a few little nicks, but they also learn to be more careful, which is not dissimilar to the scrapes, bumps and bruises from playing outside and being children.

That's a long journey to keep the same temperature! "Spawns in schools over weed beds or gravel in shallow areas. Produces thousands of pale yellow eggs c. 2 mm in diameter. Hatching occurs in one to two weeks, producing young fish 8-10 mm long (McDowall, 2000). Lifecycle stages Matures at three to four years of age. Spawning occurs in spring (McDowall, 2000)." So yes, they will have hatched, but you will have to stop the adult fish eating them. Here is a link that might be useful: NZ extract about Orfe

Hi Tricia, It's parrots feather (Myriophyllum aquaticum). Unfortunately, even though it is very pretty, it has escaped in places into matural water courses and has swamped and choked them. For that reason eEnglish Nature, the wildlife trusts and the RHS ask people not to plant it in order to avoid it spreading into the wild, and are trying to stop nurseries supplying it. Spreading can be done by irresponsible people dumping excess weed into the wild, and even just by a small amount stuck on say a heron's foot being transferred. (Sorry for the lecture, but I have to admit it is very pretty!) ps other native milfoils are ok eg spiked water milfoil and whorled water milfoil M spikatum a,d M alternifolium. These stay beneath the surface. Here is a link that might be useful: RHS ban on invasive plants