The Golden Orfe, or Ide, is a somewhat overlooked choice as a fish to stock your pond and water garden with these days; yet the Orfe is an easy to find and affordable pond and water garden fish. Most pond fish dealers stock the Golden Orfe because they know about its hardiness, interesting behavior, and easy upkeep when it comes to our backyard pond installations. The Golden Orfe, Leuciscus idus, has been in the United States for over 100 years now,...

So you’ve always wanted to tell people that you have a shark pond. The goldfish pond was too tame and the koi pond doesn’t feel edgy enough for you right? Now here is a way around that dilemma, without you having to build a 150,000 gallon saltwater heated backyard pond. The Chinese Hi Fin Banded Shark! This shark can easily make a home in your pond. This shark you will not have to feed seal lions and penguins for its daily meals. This shark you do not need to...

When I was a kid we had 7 channels of television to choose from; 3 of which I watched. This was not because of strict parents, it was because we literally only had 7 channels to watch; but I still managed to get in my fair share of tv viewing. It is almost unimaginable today to even consider the idea of such a sparse selection of programming to watch. Not to mention the fact that I had to get up and walk all the way to the TV to change the channel. It was...

In 2006 I went to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts to build a pond for my brother. Since we were little kids my brothers and I had always kept pets as a shared (or not so shared) hobby. We kept fish, frogs, turtles, salamanders and all sorts of other aquatic and terrestrial animals. Most of the time we were collecting our “pets” from the creek that was by our house or from the woods that our house backed up to. We were very sophisticated in our husbandry...

As a small business owner there is not too much better than when at the completion of a project my customer is satisfied with the results, and makes that final payment to complete the transaction we both entered into. I’m happy, my customer is happy, we both made a good trade. Goods and services in exchange for monetary compensation is happening everyday all around us; it is the norm of today’s business transactions. A recent pond installation project got me...

For a long time now I’ve been a fan of checking out different koi ponds, water gardens, waterfalls, and just about any other type of water shape. I love seeing the many different interpretations of how a pond is built, decorated, filtered, stocked, and managed. I consider myself pretty fortunate to have a job that allows me to do that on pretty much an everyday basis. I might even take it too far because most of the time even my time “off” is centered...

Koi America 2011, were you there? It’s back baby! The MAKC, Mid-Atlantic Koi Club (www.MAKC.com), hosted the Koi America 2011 event. After a 1 year hiatus Koi America was back on the map for 2011 and took place in Westminster, MD between September 23-25. This was the 22nd show for the MAKC and it was a beautiful weekend for it. The show was held in the Carroll County Agricultural Center which is nestled in the green and pretty rolling hills of Maryland. Getting...

A few years ago as I was making my rounds driving from one customer to another I was merging onto a busy highway from one of the local roads in my area. As I was coming up the on ramp to the highway I was stopped in my tracks but a huge animal looking very much like a dinosaur, in the road. I stopped my truck and watched in awe as this monster lumbered across the roadway towards the busy highway. This modern day dinosaur was snapping turtle. I am very familiar...