Thanks, Yes they will be pets! Their names are Tanya, Tucker, & Toby! We brought them home today. I have done so much reading that I'm so overwhelmed and scared I might harm them! They are grazing on the grass and some leaves that are in their pen, and we have cleared out as much brush as we could. I'm learning to identify the harmful stuff, but I just hope I didn't miss anything! Should I let them browse till their hearts content or pen them in the barn and let them out only for short times till they are bigger! I was planning to give them sweet feed, the seller said 1 cup each a day, he said he fed them it all at once, but I was thinking 1/2 in the Am and 1/2 in the PM! And hay at free will, is that a good plan? I will send some pics soon! Thanks,Brenda PS How do you not worry yourself's when they are browsing in thick brush?

I ditto tiller and others. Good advice from all so far. The only thing I would add about chemicals...is that there is one bottle of stuff you really should have, and that is a water treatment for Chlorine and Chlorimines. Chlorine is not that bad if you add less than 10-20% of your total amount at once. The fish can get Gill Burn if they play in the hose spray so put the hose in a area they can't get to. The chlorine will hurt your bacteria colonies in your bio filter but won't wipe em out. After a day or two contact with the air will dissipate the chlorine (it will go faster if you have an airator or waterfall). Chlorimines though are baaaad. They will never leave your pond without being treated with an additive. You can call your water company and see if they use chlorimines. If they do, then you need to get in the habit of using a neutralizer every water change. If they don't then you can get away without, unless you notice your plants being hurt by chlorine when you change the water. "Bad stuff" on the bottom are organic compounds like leaves, fish poop, dead fish etc. As it decomposes it will create a layer of mud called "muck". It's black and smells bad. If your pond ever has a sewer odor that's a sure sign that your muck has run amok and the fish are in danger. When this happens oxygen levels drop and you start getting brown algae and your water will look like rootbeer. Anaerobic bacteria start to go to work in the oxygen free environment. This is a fish death sentence. You should regularly scoop out the majority of the muck leaving as little as possible on the bottom after it settles back down. "Regularly" depends on your pond. More trees, dust, pollen, weaker filter etc mean you need to clean it up more or less than others. There is no rule about how often to clean. To clean out muck, you just need to scoop it out. You can do that by hand, with a bucket or shop vac. One thing I like is this little attachment that goes on the end of a garden hose. The flow of the hose water creates venturi suction that pushes the muck into a little nylon bag. Keep in mind that with any of these options you will stir up the muck and it will take a day or so to see improvement. If you do it regularly, the stirred up muck isn't a problem for the fish. But if you have a deep layer of it you might want to do what destany said above, and move the fish into a container for a bit (filled with pond water!) as all those bad compounds will be spiked during the clean. If your depth is closer to 3 feet I would still think about either getting rid of the goldfish (donate them to a pet store or other ponder) or the koi. With either 3 koi or 11 goldfish you have about the right fishload. But with both, you have about double what you will need in a year or so when they get big. If you are dead set on keeping all of them, you need to plan on losing some to stress or plan on getting a heavy duty biofilter and/or doing regular muck sweeping.

i stand by what i said, if it were truly 200 yards away, that is 600 feet for those of you who are no good at math, then the mower could not have done it. under 30 yards, yes it could. but very much further than that i would have to say no way and assume that they already had damage and were trying to fleece me. BTW, i had a side window busted out of my tahoe by a rock kicked up from a weedeater. neither the guy trimming nor i could believe it did it, but we both saw it happen. strange things can happen from debris kicked up, but not at the original distance given. again, it does not matter who YOU want to get it fixed, it is his vehicle and HE has the right to demand it be fixed at a certain location. about the only thing you can do is try to prove there is price fixing/fraud involved, and that would be nearly impossible. if you had quotes from several guys showing this was a 200.00 fix and the quote he had for the EXACT same work was for 1k, the insurance might perk up, but how are you gonna get the quotes unless he agress to take the vehicle by. Insurance co have NO say iin where or how you get your car repaired. their only responsibility is to pay the claim. i ahve had my car insurer tell me i HAD to use a certain body shop. one call to the state insurance commissioner and i was able to use who i wished, since the law here forbids them from telling you who you can use.

Nutgrass. Nutgrass is a swamp loving sedge (not a true grass). I have had excellent luck controlling it by withholding moisture in a conscientiously applied program of hyperhydration on a hypocalendar. In other words (and I'm not sure any of those are words) watering deeply and infrequently. If you are watering more often than once a week, you're watering too much, and the nutgrass loves it. When you water you should water a full inch all at one time. Measure that by placing tuna or cat food cans around the yard and time how long it takes to fill the cans. Mine takes 8 hours but my neighbor's takes 20 minutes. Yours will be between those I'm pretty sure. You need to know that time because that's how long you water all year long. The only thing that changes is the frequency. With temps higher than 90 you can water once a week. With temps in the 80s you can go every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s you can go every 3 weeks. You get the picture? The idea is to allow the surface of the soil to dry out completely before watering again. The roots are deep down, especially with deep watering, so they are getting moisture even with a rock hard and dry surface. Weed seeds cannot germinate on a dry surface, so there's a good reason to do it like this. And with regard to nutgrass, it really seems to control it (in central Texas) when you withhold water like this. There are sedge killer sprays, too. One is Sedgehammer and the other is Image (I think it's Image).