I've been MIA for a while so here's a quick update on my crazy little zoo:

The birds are doing well. Coyote is now almost completely without bars in his tail so he's looking quite grown up. I'm trying to teach him to whistle the good, the bad and the ugly. If he gets it, I'll post a video. The budgies are still budgie-rific (or budgie-noying depending on the day, heh).

My cat is getting older every day it seems, I don't know how much longer he's got in him.

My dog is well and is in the midst of his "I'm afraid of rain and mesquite seed pods so no thank you to going outside" right now, which is always loads of fun.

The koi are enjoying their new pond and we now have lots of baby koi, which was not really a good thing but a few of them are so pretty! Like a white one with just a few large red spots and a blue (grey) one with a white face and large black spots. I don't know what we're going to do once they get bigger. There just isn't enough room in this pond for them, Kevin the turtle and the little minnows (which also had zillions of babies this summer but will hopefully die off in the winter otherwise we'll really have an issue!)

That about sums it up for Casa de Cloudy!

My, it really is a zoo... Nice to read though!

And again, welcome back!

Wow you do have a collection of animals...

It's true, we do have quite a collection of little animals but really, the only pets are the birds, my old cat and my oldish dog. The pond fish and Kevin sort of take care of themselves as long as the pond is maintained. The older koi will eat from your fingers though, so we sort of taught them a trick if that counts as a trick.

Anyone in Tucson want a koi or two? I've got some babies about the size of large goldfish and some big 'uns.

Thanks, but I don't have a pond or a fishtank. I'm up to my eyeballs in birds and don't need anything else lol.

Your zoo sounds a lot like my zoo, minus the cat, and add 2 tortoises, 2 red eared slider turtles, and a bunch of goldfish and minnows along with two koi in a pond.

Ironically, I found a baby fish in my pond too. It's about a centimeter long. Can't quite tell what it was, either a goldfish or a minnow, but it was peach colored (we have rosie-red minnows).

Are you selling the koi or giving them away? I might be interested in a couple, and I live in Tucson.

Nice to hear you have a little zoo too! I'll have to ask my husband about the koi, since the pond is his thing.

As a side note, we used to have goldfish in the old pond but my husband found out that they are much dirtier than other fish which makes it harder to keep the pond balanced. Like, they poop more for the same amount of food or something. So if you start having issues with your nitrogen or whatever (I start to zone out when he starts talking about all that), you may want to look at your goldfish situation and, er, ways to remedy it.

Kevin is a red eared slider too. She's super cute when she pops her head up in the middle of all the water hyacinth and pretends we can't see her. I wish she'd eat some baby minnows because seriously y'all, I think we have as many as there are stars in the sky.

So far we haven't had a problem with the goldfish producing a lot of waste, yet. The only real nuisance we've had with the pond so far is algae (strings of it would grow sometimes), and mesquite beans from the tree. We did get some algae killer, and we've been putting just enough in every week to keep it from growing into long strings, but also leave some for the fish to eat (because they're practically feeding themselves by eating algae).

My turtles don't seem to be doing much to the fish population either. Then again, they're both pretty slow. Makes me wonder what the heck they're living on, in there. Squirt(M) and Teenie(F) are their names. They're both very young still, since they're really small, so I'm not expecting eggs any time soon, plus I'm planning on giving away Teenie to someone once she gets bigger. I was thinking of going to the Tucson reptile rescue and adopting another. Red-Eared sliders are invasive species, and they have so many, that they will give them away for free to people who have a pond and are not looking to breed them. However, I don't think my pond is big enough for another turtle (I doubt it's big enough for 2. That's why I plan on giving Teenie to somebody else once she's bigger).

My husband now says he wants to give them til next Spring before giving any away, I guess to see who survives the winter (I'm sure they all will, but whatever!) If you're still interested then, let me know because I'm sure we'll be ankle deep in koi at that point if they keep this up.

Have you been to Agua Caliente park? The ponds there are absolutely bursting with red eared sliders, at least that's what I think they are. I only remember a random turtle here and there at that park when I was younger so they probably started out as a couple of released pets in the 80's or something. I could probably google it but I'm too lazy.

As for your pond, here's what my husband did that ended up keeping the algae under control even though the pond is in full sun. He bought a small clump of water hyacinth and placed it in a floating thingy with holes in it too small for the koi, otherwise they'd just eat the root ball until it died. Once it started growing, it went Godzilla on the pond and now we're having to pull clumps out just to leave some of the pond uncovered. It keeps the pond cooler and the algae can only grow in certain spots which the fish keep mowed down like a golfing green, ha. Just an idea if your issue is too much direct sunlight. Oh and the blossoms are very pretty too!

The mesquite beans are a problem. Once the koi get bigger, as long as you don't feed them too much, they'll actually chew up the bean pods but it still leaves a lot of waste in the pond. My husband actually built a new pond in another part of the yard because of the mesquite beans and leaves issue (lesson learned, no put pond under mesquite tree even though it's pretty that way).

I should post some pics of the pond. My husband put a lot of work into it and it really is very pretty.