Hi Pf, thank you, i am not sure if those are native here in central, fl. from what ive read they are primarily in northern states? I could be wrong, im in learning mode about native fish. from what of most ive read so far says that many fish have become widespread though, so its veery possible. I saw pics and wondered myself. I was looking at them a few minutes ago with the 3 cell maglight and they have blue, with green speckles all over them when the light hits them just right. there are many colors to these fish. I am not sure if they are all the same type (probably given the restriction of the small pond) or whether there are two or three. ive tried to get better pics with a bright halogen lamp but i just cant get that camera to get a crisp enough pic. this is the best one so far that i have after many tries, but i will keep trying.

Could be any one of a number of 'ornamental' crabs, even including an unnamed seedling, but two likely possibilities include 'Callaway'(that's what it would be here), and 'Evereste' - both fit that description, and the fruits are quite tasty.

Y'all are too funny. The 'panic' statement was NOT aimed at or inspired by any one person, but don't y'all think there's a little bit of that "oh no" panic in all of us when we discover one garden pest or another has arrived? I just figured it was that time of year, and wanted to encourage everyone to view their garden/yard/landscape as an ecosystem and understand that ecosystems need balance, and that includes a balanced bug population. The only people I know who have really serious insect issues are the ones who routinely spray broad-spectrum chemical pesticides (and I have folks around me in the country who do this too, it is NOT restricted to only city folks) every time they see a bug. Once they've wiped out the good bugs, there's no one left to help them with the bad bugs, and bad bugs always rebound more quickly. Andria, bugguide.net is a good bug ID site and there are others, but that's the one I use the most often. Bt products should state on their label which Bt they are, unless it is clear in their name. The ones I buy have an Ingredient list and specify which Bt in that list. Bt kurstaki is sold in many products, and often it says Caterpillar Killer in large letters on the label. You'll find it in Thuricide and Dipel, among other products and, yes, the caterpillars you see on cole family crops are controlled by this form of Bt. The 'san diego' strain used for Colorado Potato Beetles will feature a Beetle somewhere on its label or in its name, like the product 'Colorado Potato Beater". The 'israelensis' strain used for mosquito larvae will have mosquitoes on the label and is found as mosquito dunks or as a granular product you can sprinkle into ponds and other still bodies of water. To avoid harming butterflies, I try to use Bt 'kurstaki' as little as possible, but it would be hard to get a good crop of cabbage without it. I don't spray the broccoli though, and I don't spray tomato plants with Bt to kill hornworms and fruitworms. I just handpick them when I find them and count on the help of the parasitic wasps. Boomer, Thanks. I think we have more than two kinds of gardeners here...we have many kinds and we all just do the best we can with what we've got. I gardened in a big city until I was 39 years old and moved here. I remember when folks sprayed DDT for everything when I was a child. Heck, I remember us kids running or riding our bicycles in the 'mist' that came out of the tanker truck when the city sprayed for mosquitoes. (It is a wonder the chemical exposure didn't kill us all!) I've tried raising a big 8' x 10' garden in a yard that was 95% shade, and was thrilled to have 6 tomato plants. I've done square foot gardening. I've done container gardening. What I do now is Biointensive gardening the John Jeavons/Alan Chadwick way. It works better for me than anything else I've ever done. You have to work with what you've got, and we've all got different challenges. And, in case you're thinking it is easy out here in the country, let me tell you.....I have ranching neighbors who spray large amounts of chemicals and it sometimes causes me problems. You just have to deal with the hand you're dealt. I get very frustrated when their herbicide drift kills or damages plants in my garden, but there's really nothing I can do to prevent it. I don't think pesticides are used as much as they used to be out here, but they're still used at a level that makes me uncomfortable. In one very, very bad grasshopper year, so much junk was sprayed to kill grasshoppers (and it didn't kill them!) that many songbirds died. We didn't see a single bluebird for over three years. During the last decade, I've seen a big shift in attitudes here...even the diehard chemical-using farmers and ranchers are trying really hard to do things in a much more sustainable way, and that gives me hope. They used to laugh at me, the organic nut, and now some of them ask me "What would you do for....." and I try to give them the best organic answers I know. Being more sustainable and 'green' is in, and that's a really good thing. Still, even though I prefer to garden as naturally as possible, I would defend anyone's right to use a chemical product if that is what they believe is best. I just think there's a better way. I don't even like using pyrethrins/permethrins because of their toxicity, and I would never use Rotenone. Neem is OK, but I only use it as an absolute last resort...so maybe one time every three or four years. I avoid most soaps and horticultural oils because they can burn foliage in hot weather. I guess, when it comes right down to it, that's not much I use other than hand-picking, squishing, or drowning pests. I do like Spinosad and love iron phosphate/Spinosad for the sowbugs and pill bugs. I use Nolo Bait every few years for hoppers (this probably will be that year....based on what I'm seeing in terms of how large the current nymph hatch is). I use more companion planting than anyone I know, and I use the companion plants either to attract beneficials and pollinators or to repel unwanted pests. I always describe my beds as a crazy quilt, because each bed is a blend of veggies, flowers and herbs. Some of the 'old farmer' types here refer to my companion plants as 'your weeds' but I just laugh it off. In case you think I don't get that little panicky 'oh no' feeling when I see a sudden influx of pests, you're wrong. I get it too. Then, instead of reaching for a chemical solution, I work on using a natural one. There have been a couple of times that I panicked and bought a chemical pesticide, and then couldn't force myself to use it. lol Guess what? The pest issue resolved itself and I didn't lose my crop or even a significant portion of it. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, but it has taken me my entire life to arrive at the point that I understand that. When we moved here, we had lots of pest insects, and seemingly few beneficial insects. I worked really hard for 4 or 5 years to control the bad guys and attract the good guys, and finally had one of those years where the good guys showed up and took care of the bad guys. There were a couple of years like that, and then one year, the good guys didn't come. Do you know why? Because our population of pest insects was too low to support the good bugs. It took me a while to understand that, but then it was an 'aha' moment and I finally got "it". Laura, I loved your description of your ecosystem and all the wild critters in it. I think it is simply wonderful that your daughter is learning so much at such a young age. Debra addressed the lady bug issue....all shapes, sizes, colors, including solid black ones. I've even seen pink ones here. They're pretty cute. Jleroi, Some of the most fierce battles I've ever seen are between praying mantids....but there's all kinds of life-and-death-drama between the various wild things every day. It is fascinating! Tigerdawn, This wasn't aimed at you. lol You're going to be fine. Trust me. I have a gardening friend who used to reach for the pesticide every time he saw a bug and has just decided to wait until a certain level of damage is being seen. Guess what? He rarely sees the damage rise to the level he thinks is 'too much' and now he realizes that the insects are not nearly as damaging as he thought they were. Glenda, My friend, Fred, is a big Sevin user, but he's really backed off in the last few years, and I can't tell his garden has any more pest issues than it did before. I think that after years of giving me a hard time about 'hogging all the bees', he finally decided to stop spraying so much and see if his bees would come back....and they did. He proudly stopped by one day recently while I was working outside to announce that the bees were working his fruit trees like crazy. I was excited for him. Dorothy, I think I'll look and see if Rodale has a bug guide somewhere online. You'd think they would. I used to have a great insect book, but I must have loaned it out or something because I can't find it now. All of you might get a big kick out of this: one year when our son was in high school, they had to do an Insect Collection, which of course was not high on any teenager's priority list. Once our son's classmates realized we had every bug in the world here at our place, some of them came by to 'catch bugs'. I wasn't sure if they thought it was great that we had so many bugs, or maybe terrible that we had so many, but they were able to catch all the different kinds of bugs they needed in just a couple of hours! Then they all worked together to identify them, and that helped me learn the names of some of the more obscure bugs, like Southern robber flies. After that, we were the 'go-to guys' for anyone doing a bug collection...nieces and nephews who lived in 'nuked' neighborhoods in Texas, DH's co-workers kids from Texas, etc. Need a bug? We've got 'em here. : ) And, once they came here to collect bugs, they learned we had lots of wildflowers.....which then gave them an idea where to come when it was time for the Texas kids to do a wildflower collection. Dawn

Ilene, It does help. Here's why the temperatures are important. I sometimes see either bacterial speck or bacterial spot in my garden during very cool and rainy periods, which means that here in Love County I see those diseases most often in March through May. So, it is not inconceivable that you had them appear in June since y'all were cooler and wetter than we were at that time. If you have bacterial diseases present in your soil, you can never really get rid of them. They spread via the splashing of rain, water runoff during heavy rainfall or irrigation, insects, tools, and people working around the plants (can transfer bacteria from plant to plant via your hands, gardening gloves or tools). The bacteria survive in and around your garden on debris from past plants, volunteers from seed from diseased plants, and even in weeds. Bacterial Speck (Pseudomonas syringae) is the one I see earliest in the spring, often in March and April. It appears when plants are wet and temperatures are in the 55 to 77 degree range, often right after the plants are transplanted into the ground. It shows up first as small dark brownish-black specks on the leaves, and sometimes there is a very, very narrow ring of yellow around the brown specks. This disease affects leaves and foliage, but only affects green fruits (and, normally, it appears before you'd see any ripe fruit in our climate). On the fruit, the infection shows up as really, really small dark specks, less than 1/16" in diameter. Sometimes the part right around the specks is darker green than the rest of the tomato. The specks may be slightly raised above the surface on green tomatoes, but as the tomatoes ripen and the disease progresses, the infected areas become sunken and generally you will not see ripening around those specks. Bacterial Spot (Xanthomonas campestris) is the one I usually see second earliest in the year, if I see it at all and I'm more likely to see it from late April through late May. You will see it when weather is warm and either humid or wet or both. It appears when temperatures are in the 75 to 86 degree range. The bacteria enters your plants through natural openings or wounds and can infect the stems, leaves and fruit. On the leaves, the spots are dark brown, take on a sort of "greasy" appearance when foliage is wet, and are very small, rarely exceeding 1/8" in diameter. It is hard to tell what you have when Bacterial Spot first appears because in its early stages it is virtually identical to Bacterial Speck and to the early stages of Septoria Leaf Spot, which is fungal and not bacteria. However, if the leaf spotting does not progress to lighter gray centers in the middle of the older brown spots, you know it is not Septoria. With Bacterial Spot, first you have the brown spots, then you see a general yellowing of your leaves and then the leaves take on a scorched (brown and dead) appearance. Foliar blighting (rapid death) progresses upward on heavily infected plants. If you have fruit on the plants at this point, you'll see the fruit spots appear on the green fruit as raised, scabby spots that are very dark brown and can be up to about 1/3" in diameter, although many stay smaller than that. If you have ripe fruit, the spots turn into sunken areas that look water-soaked. Once you have bacterial speck and spot, there is no cure so all you can do is practice good crop roation and good sanitation. The bacteria survives on plant residue or debris, including seeds (so don't save seeds from infected fruit and don't let volunteers live if they sprout in that area). Mulching helps because it keeps bacterial residing in the soil from splashing up onto plants when it rains. Watering only with soaker hoses or drip irrigation helps, but you can't control dew or rainfall. Watch your peppers closely, because if you have bacterial spot (and I think you may), it can spread to them. Bacterial speck and spot is a problem whenever leaves stay wet, so you've certainly had the conditions for it these last two years. You can spray weekly, but it needs to be with a bacteriacide and not just a fungicide, so look for something that is a mixture of a fungicide PLUS copper. It won't entirely prevent the disease, but it helps reduce its incidence, slow down its development and helps you get a better yield from infected plants. Bacterial Canker is less common, at least in my garden. It is caused by Corynebacterium michiganensis and it is really hard to diagnose because its symptoms look so similar to those of several other diseases. A lot of people think you can identify it by the stem canker that show up with it, and you can, but it does not always show stem canker in every case. Canker shows up mainly as scorched (brown, dead) leaves and blight (death) from the lower part of the plant at first and then moving upward. One way to know if you have Bacterial Canker is to split open stems on affected plants. If the stems have internal discoloration that is a streaky mix of reddish-brown and yellow, you have baterial canker. Eventually, as the disease progresses, you'll see whitish cankers on the stems and leaf petioles, although sometimes the plant dies before symptoms progress that far. You'll get canker spots on the fruit, about 1/8" to 1/4" in diameter and they have a brown center surrounded by a white ring. They're often referred to as birdseye spots. If plants are infected with canker early, they usually die. Sometimes if they are larger and stronger, they may survive. If you had sudden wilt and death, but did not see yellowing on the leaves, I'd suspect bacterial wilt. It is easy to diagnose "after the fact". Just suspend in a glass of water a clean, cut end of a stem from an infected plant. If what killed your plants was bacterial wilt, you'll quickly see a sort of milky-white stream of slimey bacterial cells flowing into the water from the stem. If you have bacterial wilt, it is VERY hard to eradicate. Remove and dispose of all affected plant debris and don't compost it. I guess that I most strongly suspect Bacterial Spot, but also think maybe Fusarium Wilt, which is viral and not bacterial. So, here's a little about Fusarium Wilt. Fusarium Wilt is caused when the pathogen Fusarium oxysporum sp. lycopersici invades a plant's vascular system. It probably is the most commonly seen wilt disease in our state. (A lot of people think they have Verticillium Wilt, but it isn't found here, as far as I know.) This is how it progresses. See if it sounds like what you saw on your plants. First you see a yellowing of lower foliage and those yellow leaves do eventually wilt, brown and die. Sometimes, but not always, it appears first on one side of the plant and then progresses upward for a while before it moves to the other side of the plant. If you have this and you are not sure if it is Fusarium Wilt or not, cut a stem or petiole from an infected plant and inspect it. You'll see some reddish-brown discoloration in the tissue between the pith (stem center) and the outer green part of the stem. When I go to the OSU Fact Sheet that contains info on Fusarium Wilt, the color photo on it looks a lot like some of your photos. Fusarium Wilt is a late spring to early summer disease here, usually appearing when daytime temps are in the 80 to 90 degree range. There are at least 3 known races of Fusarium Wilt in tomatoes, but I think race 3 is only in California. Modern-day hybrids often have some resistance to one, two or all three races bred into them. You'll know by the appearance of F, FF, or FFF in the letters that follow the hybrid plant name. Heirlooms may or may not have resistance--it's just that no one has tested them to prove if they do or not. Unfortunately, resistance is only resistance and not immunity. If you have Fusarium Wilt, it will live in your soil forever. It also is seed-borne, so you can get it through no fault of your own. I don't know what kind of soil you have, but it seems to be worse in sandier soils (I don't know why). I might lose 1 or 2 plants a year to it some years in my clay soil, and none in other years. Early blight is my worst disease here, and I am not convinced you have it since you didn't see obvious concentric, target-like brown circles surrounded by yellowing leaf tissue. It is caused by Alternaria solani and is the most common leaf-spotting fungal disease in Oklahoma, and perhaps all over the country as well. Early Blight causes excessive defoliation and, because it often appears when fruit load is very heavy, that can lead to sunscald and fruit loss. When I have EB showing up on a plant, I promptly pick all the fruit the minute they hit the breaker or "blush of pink" stage. EB will move from the leaves, where it first shows symptoms, to the stems and even the fruit. (I get my fruit off the plant before it can move to them though.) EB starts at the bottom and progresses upward with lower foliage sloughing and dying off. SOMETIMES, with SOME plants, new growth comes out and the plant actually "outgrows" the disease and survives. In my garden, Brandy Boy and Snow White are two plants that often survive EB, but a lot of others do not. I usually SEE signs of EB the third week in June, when we are really hot and humid, but have seen it as early as the second week of May, if May is a hot month. EB most often attacks stressed plants, but ALL plants in Oklahoma are stressed, aren't they? Sometimes the stress is too much heat or too much or too little rain, but even just carrying a very heavy load of ripening fruit is enough to stress the plant so it is susceptible to EB. I don't think you have Septoria Leaf Spot because you have tons of really obvious small spots with it, and in your photos, I see larger brownish areas. I have practically written a book and don't know if I've helped at all. I don't have much experience with Gray Leaf Spot, caused by Stemphllium solani, so I don't know if it is what you have. I do know that it can resemble the early spring damage you see from flea beetles, because tissue necrosis occurs in the center of the specks, giving it that shot-hole appearance, and I think you said you were seeing some of that, so you may have Gray Leaf Spot. WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN AND HAVE WE FIGURED IT OUT? I have no idea. The green tomatoes that have had that rash area probably have Bacterial Spot. You can rule in or rule out Bacterial Canker by inspecting the stems as i described above. If it is Bacterial Wilt, you can diagnose it by suspending the cut stem in the glass of water and watching for a discharge, as described above. I still lean towards thinking it is Fusarium Wilt but also with perhaps Gray Leaf Spot and/or Early Blight. I am pretty sure it is NOT Southern Blight (instant wilt of seemingly healthy green plants followed by a white mold on the stem and surronding soil). I've only had Southern Blight on one plant here in ten years. Pretty sure it is too hot here for it to be late blight, and when you have late blight you generally see white mold on the leaves and late blight spoils the fruit too. The symptoms don't match anthracnose although you do sometimes see anthracnose on fruit AFTER EB has severely defoliated and weakened the plants. I assume it isn't any of the soil rot diseases since your tomatoes are fine, except for the smaller, newer ones that don't develop properly. You could go to the OSU Fact Sheets and look at the photos there if you haven't already, but like I already said, the real-life stuff I see in my garden doesn't compare well to photos because in real life you often have a mixture of several sets of symptoms. Long ago I printed the three OSU Fact Sheets on Common Diseases of Tomatoes, and I have read them and looked at them so many times that I feel like I could probably recite them from memory. They are Common Diseases of Tomatoes Part I. Diseases Caused By Fungi (F-7625) Common Diseases of Tomatoes Part II. Diseased Caused By Bacteria, Viruses, and Nematodes. (F-7626) Common Diseases of Tomatoes Part III. Non-Infectious Diseases. (F-7627) I sort of disagree with their title (but they are the experts and I am not). What they call non-infectious diseases is what I think of as mostly physiological disorders, but that's just me. For all the issues in the first two factsheets, the only "solution" is prevention. Once you have bacterial and fungal stuff in your soil, it is usually there forever. Sometimes you can kill it will solarization. It used to be you could fumigate with something like Vapam, which is no longer on the market, but I don't know that it was all that effective back when people used it, and as an organic gardener, I wouldn't have used it anyway. If it wasn't for bacterial and fungal disease, which I tend to refer to "foliar issues" in general, everyone in the USA would have a row of tomatoes in their backyards. If there is anything that discourages gardeners to the point that they give up growing tomatoes, it probably is foliar issues and nematodes. Dawn