I have several raspberry plants to trade, but I don't know the variety. They bear in June and grow quite large.

missa7, I ran this a week or so ago. Same old story... working on solving it. Gerbils, rabbits, mice...call it what you want; just make them stop ! lol. my spirits shrink when I see my gold colored critters racing around my pond; doing the dance. I wrote this in my thread: "Under the "If I were to start over again regarding first fish" category. No goldfish - just a couple of inexpensive koi." LP Here is a link that might be useful: To Catch a ... goldfish(s)

I hope your fish pulls through Ernie. It sounds like you may have a raccoon feeding at you pond. With it only being 200 gallons the raccoons can get right into it very easily and snatch a fish. Looks as if you may have to have something around the pond to deter the raccoons as they will keep coming back for a meal. I had my pond raided so often that I installed a low lying electric fence around it and that has done the trick so far. "Horton"

You're right Ann. One spawn may produce 50,000 fry. They know from the breeding if the fry should be white or black (showa and shiro utsuri fry are black and get their colors later, most other varieties start out white) so they can start culling at 2 weeks discarding any offspring that isn't the right color. Then they cull again and again, until they have maybe 5000 left. Of those, most will still be pond grade but at least sellable. Some look pretty nice as 6" fish but do not have what it takes to go the distance, so they color them up really nicely with color enhancing feeds and export them. They get sold for as little as $10 each. The dealers here pay shipping and then mark them up (sometimes mark them WAY up) and sell them proudly as Japanese imports for up to $100. They may look great now, but will probably not look so great in a few years. the ones that the breeders see some potential....the ones with good patterns, good bodies, and deep beni (red) get put back into the mud ponds for a year. Then their price goes WAY up.....or sometimes when they are harvested their price goes down because what the breeder was looking for did not happen. So it is culled, exported and sold here as a nisai (2 year old). What a koi buyer has to keep in mind is ALL fish that are offered for sale were selected by the breeder to be culled because of something he did not like. The price depends on how close to perfect the fish is when it is culled. Although some things can't be seen in pictures (like skin quality and depth of beni), I'll be happy to look at your fish and tell you the good and bad about them. I am not a koi judge, but do have a pretty good eye.