Bacteria or parasite, or both?

by **Rose** » Wed May 11, 2011 9:26 pm

Hi, first post and I'm afraid its asking for help, we have kept koi for about 20 years, in a semi natural set up comprising of a small aprox 500gal feeder pond with plants etc feeding via a stream a 3,500gal pond with koi, goldfish and orfe, and had no real problems aside from the odd age related loss.
This year we shut the feeder pond due to silt build up and just run the main pond on its usual home made trickle filter with UV, all parameters are OK tap water does not contain measurable amounts of chlorine, and oxygen content is good.
We have now lost three good sized koi, and the symptoms are occasional itching although not excessive, no signs of external parasites, we thought it might be Chilodonella or Costia so we treated with NT labs EX5
which has done very little, we are now contemplating using NT labs Acriflavin, either one dose or the 7 day coarse.
The main symptoms are apart from the occasional inching, are lethargy, off feeding, sitting on the bottom, with the more advanced cases showing signs of slight reddening of the skin, swimming with one gill cover and the same side pectoral fin clamped, with eventual instability and floating on the side at the surface, and cloudy eyes and blindness with death flowing, our 27 year old put up a prolonged battle but died today, not seen anything like this before, the only thing that has changed is that we introduced four small Israeli koi about three weeks ago, but these symptoms have been building before this, any ideas welcome.

by **koimaster** » Thu May 12, 2011 8:22 am

your best bet is to get a scrape done ASAP to find you what you are fighting against as you could be fighting all the above you have mentioned plus more.
shutting off your top pond has caused a tip in the natural pond balance which has lead "to say poor water conditions" would probably be unfair on yourself but a slight change in the water flow etc can cause dead spots in the water and this in turn will lower the water quality enough without you realizing causing these problems you face until it has been to late.
if your local place where you are getting the treatment from can not do scrapes please let me know your area and i will do my best to try and find someone or a contact that would be able to help.
in the mean time i would lay off chucking any more treatments in as you really could just be stressing the fish more with them.

And your first post is a very good one notworthy

the amount of time i have been on forums and i see "help my fish is sick can you help " and stuff like "my fish swimming and has stopped eating" as the only lines of a clue to what has been going on. . i really do take my hat off to you and welcome you to the forum.