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  1. #1

    Question At the end of my tether!

    I am really not sure where to go next with my pond and would really appreciate some advice. A couple of my fish aren’t doing too great. I will summarise the last few months as maybe someone here can spot something I can’t. If you don’t want to read that, skip to the second lot of wavy lines!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Pond is 25 years old, I inherited it about a year and a half ago. I have lost 6 fish this year spaced over the last 5 months, for what I think were different reasons:

    The first was (30/04) a 22 inch 25 year old mirror carp shortly after what I think was an ammonia spike in the pond when the weather first started getting warm (readings were about 0.5mg/l by the time I managed to get hold of a kit). It had nothing on its body. This was when I didn’t really know what I was doing with the filters in spring. I got some help from here and read up online, and started more regular maintenance of the filters, testing the water and water changes.

    The next was a small koi bought online that arrived (21/05) with a split fin and never recovered (I only tried blagdon all in one treatment, I couldn’t see its eventual injuries) – there were eventually ulcers underneath where the fin met the body, the fin disappeared in the space of a day and it got dropsy and fuzzy stuff on its mouth and died (20/06). I had credit with this company so I got some butterfly koi from there (02/07). One mysteriously vanished (19/07 - assuming it flapped out under the net SOMEHOW and got eaten) the other 2 remain.

    At the same time, a 22 inch 25 year old mirror carp died (21/06) that had all manner of problems – it had had these weird lumps underneath for months and a red belly. Then after the new fish arrived, it had these large white growths that a koi dealer (and everyone on here) wasn’t sure about but gave me Eradick for. The weird white spots were the only thing that went away. He later suggested tumours and/or septicaemia and told me to salt my pond, which I did to 0.4%. People on here thought she was egg bound. Another koi dealer gave me bacterad. She started swimming slightly sideways then was fully on her side and died before I could get the salt to 0.6%. She didn’t have many scales but there were a few that were completely puffed up like big blisters and her belly was really, really red.

    I got 3 small fish from a different shop (25/07). One of them remains. Two from a different tank died within a couple of weeks ish: one got a split fin while being netted up (I was advised by them to put it in the pond) and had red streaky fins, but instead of getting dropsy, this one got sunken eyes and died. The other had nothing visible but also behaved weird from the start, isolating often and hardly ever eating.

    During the time those 2 were in the pond, a 10 year old goldfish died (03/08). I think it was egg bound. It had spawned a lot of eggs in the couple of weeks before, then suddenly got really fat and sulked on the bottom for a couple of days. I thought it was resting but then it started to tilt sideways at a funny angle and died quite quickly. No raised scales like dropsy, just really fat in the middle.

    The goldfish, and the 2 from the last shop had pale gills when they died. I don’t know whether this is because they had been dead for some time and the gills go pale after they die…???

    The whole time this is going on, I am testing the pond and getting good readings and posting things here. Several of the fish were spitting food out intermittently, though, so I kept assuming there were parasites. I must have taken 20 or more scrapes and never saw anything moving or anything that looked like it was once alive, which was actually really frustrating as if I had found something, I could have treated for it. I looked at most of the slide with x40 and x100 magnification. The x400 magnification is impossible to focus on anything.

    I was also looking for flashing. I have one 22 inch 25 year old ghost koi that flashes every day a couple of times (while I’m there) but my dad said he’s done this his whole life. Say I sat watching them for half an hour, I might see one fish flash once. However, I read something that suggested this is normal due to daily fluctuations (my KH is low) and because they weren’t all doing it and often, I wasn’t too worried, and that’s why I continued to buy fish.

    Also, I did try to treat the aforementioned small fish in isolation but it only seemed to make them die faster!

    When I started to suspect the gill irritation might be chlorine, I tested for that but that was apparently fine…

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    About 2 weeks ago I got 8 new small Yamazaki koi from a new place I was taken to for my birthday. I figured it would be better to do this than buy fish from several different places. These fish have been super active, very social and eat a LOT, and made me realise how new fish SHOULD behave.

    I noticed some of the other fish in the shop had what looked like (and the shop thought was) carp pox. I had seen fish with this there months prior. I wasn’t too bothered about this as I believed it to be harmless like warts, and I THOUGHT my pond had already had it a while ago.

    However, the 22 inch ghost koi has since developed carp pox and stopped eating. He spends a lot of time hanging out near the surface, which he does do from time to time normally, just not this much.

    Either the day before or the day I got the new fish, one of the butterfly koi stopped eating. It spent half its time sulking near (not on) the bottom. Now it’s swimming with the others in different depths, it looks at the food but doesn’t take any. Last couple of days though, it has started doing this weird thing where it hangs a couple of inches below the water, and then suddenly pops its head above water, and dives down deep, blowing air out of the gills (lunking?). It does this every few minutes! This is what the goldfish that died did for a very long time. The pond is oxygenated with air stones. I have seen him flashing a little bit.

    The other butterfly koi also has behaved a BIT differently - it doesn’t eat as much and hangs near the surface occasionally but isn’t in as bad shape.

    One other goldfish sulked for a couple of days not long after these fish were added but has since gone back to normal.

    The other goldfish/grasscarp aren’t any different and neither is the only other koi.

    The new fish flash as much as the others ever did – i.e. I might see one of them do it once a day. They also spit their food, and either eat it again or eat food spit from each other’s mouths.

    I took the pond readings every couple of days since getting the new fish. The ammonia initially went up to around 0.05mg/l. They quickly went back to what they usually are:
    pH 7.5
    KH 3, GH 5
    Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate 0mg/l
    Phosphate 2mg/l

    My main concerns are the big koi not eating with pox, the fact that the butterfly koi stopped eating and started lunking (he’s small so surely he will die soon if he doesn’t eat?) and most of the fish are spitting, along with very occasional flashing.

    So my questions are:

    1. Will carp pox put a fish off its food?
    2. Does it sound like I’m just really bad at doing scrapes and there’s been parasites the whole time?! I haven’t done one recently as I never find anything and don’t want to stress the fish.
    3. Does it sound like gill flukes? Or something else? Bacterial gill disease?
    4. If it’s not obvious, is there a general treatment I can put in for parasites that will actually work? I know lots of people have had trouble treating parasites recently.
    5. Am I right in discounting the fish that arrived ill and concluding that all these deaths are unrelated?
    6. Should I just treat the one butterfly koi that stopped eating?
    7. If it’s parasites from the new fish, why aren’t they flashing more and it’s the old fish that seem more ill?
    8. How quickly should they be breathing? I am trying to watch the gills but I don't know what's normal. The ones I can see into when they swim away seem the right colour.


    Please help!!
    Thank you for reading.


    Last edited by laulau; 27-08-2020 at 09:31 PM.

  2. #2
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai algarth's Avatar
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    Please contact me with your location and how many gallons is your pond??

    Gary T

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  4. #3
    Thanks for your reply. It's about 1100 gallons. I got several new small fish because the ones that died were so massive, planning to make the pond bigger next year.

    I forgot to add that I feed them a lot (very small handful 6-8 times a day - just enough that they eat it all within about 30 seconds) as the new fish are so greedy. Does this cause spitting?

  5. #4
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai algarth's Avatar
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    Koi usually spit food out when they have taken too much in one big slurp Where in the country are you?

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  7. #5
    PM sent. I should add that I observed the new fish in the shop for about 2-3 hours and only saw one of them flash once. They had been quarantined etc and been there for months.

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  9. #6
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai algarth's Avatar
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    Where were they from??? Dealer??
    Quote Originally Posted by laulau View Post
    PM sent. I should add that I observed the new fish in the shop for about 2-3 hours and only saw one of them flash once. They had been quarantined etc and been there for months.

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  11. #7
    The new fish were from a fish shop (different kinds) that I believe has lots of shops up and down the country. The ones that died I got from a koi dealer.

  12. #8
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai algarth's Avatar
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    Were they in Preston near Broughton?

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  14. #9
    The new ones? Kind of, I guess? Well now you've got me wondering! What are you thinking?!

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  16. #10
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai algarth's Avatar
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    Maidenhead Aquatics in Broughton??? Koi dealer in Bury?????
    Quote Originally Posted by laulau View Post
    The new ones? Kind of, I guess? Well now you've got me wondering! What are you thinking?!
    Last edited by algarth; 28-08-2020 at 08:18 AM.

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  18. #11
    Senior Member Rank = Gosai KevT's Avatar
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    I was very worried last time I went into one of their "Aquatics Shops" in a local garden centre - they had a pond that was very heavily stocked and people could buy food to feed the fish - the water smelled and had a lot of foam on the surface - all the fish seemed to have soars, red marks and fin damage - the problem I see is the sheer amount of food being fed all day - can't see how you can manage the amount of food going into the pond - this obviously was effecting water quality and the fishes health they all looked to be in poor condition.

    KevT

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  20. #12
    I went to my local one, they too have a large pond with large koi in that you can feed.
    But the water was crystal clear 'looked' fine and the fish looked in top shape, although this was pre lockdown so probably at the start of March. Might venture back and have another look.
    Jay

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  22. #13
    Senior Member Rank = Gosai KevT's Avatar
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    Hi Jay,

    I think LauLau's post is typical of people taking over an established pond with old fish which will have lived in the pond for years - I had a similar problem when my dad died - the pond was too much for my mum - he had a pond with three big koi an orfe and a gold fish all 20+ years old - I moved them into my pond mid summer - tried my best to not stress them too much moving them - my local koi centre even gave me a chemical to help with stress in transport and to stimulate extra slime that should have helped - I starved the fish for a few days and used a small tank of oxygen + black bags and polystyrene lined boxes - the pond temps were identical + PH - the fish were great for a few months then the orfe died for no reason - followed over the next twelve months by two of the koi - the gold fish and one koi lasted another few years, but all died with no visible issues - I even fed my dads food mixed in with my food so they could get used to my food - not one of my koi died or even had a single issue - just think koi become delicate as they age. Not one of the fish showed any signs of illness - all fed well.

    I would say it's a very difficult task to take over a pond that someone has looked after for years as you are taking over from someone's hobby, if you don't know anything about fish keeping that makes it even more difficult, and if it goes wrong it will be fatal.

    Good luck - just keep an eye on feeding levels and water parameters and keep up to the filter cleaning regimes.

    KevT

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  24. #14
    Cheers kev At the end of my tether!



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  26. #15
    Moderator Rank = Supreme Champion Feline's Avatar
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    Hi laulau

    I think you need to stop adding new fish to this pond for the time being. The existing fish in the pond had probably been in a state of equilibrium with any parasites they might have carried, and the filters would have had a suitable biofilm to cope with the waste of the existing fish (hopefully).

    Adding new fish to an established system like that unfortunately often causes unexpected issues. New fish may carry their own parasite burdens, which the old fish are susceptible to, and vice versa.

    Yes, it is possible that you are missing something on your scrapes. But if it is primarily a bacterial issue there might be no parasites to see. If you could get a local koi enthusiast to come round and help you double check it might be beneficial.

    because you have lost fish of different types and sizes it doesn’t sound like a low oxygen problem.
    however the first thing you should always do when having problems is go back to water quality and do everything you can to return that to a tip top stable condition.
    Have you double checked for any chlorine getting into the pond?
    Also check pH is stable at different times of the day.
    If there is any ammonia or nitrite at all showing in your readings then increase water changes and stop feeding. Your fish will not starve to death but they will be poisoned by waste products so it is always safer to reduce or stop feeding as a default.

    Going back to the possible bacterial issues- you need to carefully check the pond and filters for any area of accumulated crud that could be harbouring the nasties. Sometimes a liner fold can do this, but many filters have dead spots with not much flow in them, such as hiding under media. Give everything a very good clean (being careful not to kill off biofilm on any bio media with tap water tho obviously).

    If you get in a position where your water quality is perfect and you’ve rechecked everything else, then you may need to look at things you can do to address the bacterial load in the system. Unfortunately the chemicals which do that can also knock back your filters so this is difficult thing to undertake and shouldn’t be done before you’ve tried to fix all of the above first.

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  28. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by algarth View Post
    Maidenhead Aquatics in Broughton??? Koi dealer in Bury?????
    No, neither of these.

    To be fair to the place, like I said, I did watch all the fish for some time and the only thing I could see was carp pox on some of them.

    As for it being an inherited pond, I should clarify that my dad is still around and taught me how to look after it. He visits the pond very frequently, I am really grateful for the pond actually as it's been a really nice way of spending time with my dad, pottering around it, doing the maintenance and getting new fish, because his health hasn't been so good... Just there was a brief period at the start of lockdown when I wasn't on top of the filters myself and the weather was hot/up and down, when I think there was probably an ammonia spike that caused the first death (looking back through my water test records). If anything, once I found out about all this stuff and started cleaning the pond up more, I could have made things worse; I was reading about all this stuff everyone was doing to their pond but my dad was super hands off comparatively speaking - he cleaned the filters/vacuumed and I believe added extra filtration, but didn't do water changes (just topped up) or test the water regularly, dare I say he didn't dechlorinate it, and didn't have problems with the pond - or the remaining fish are double hard! I think there was one year a long time ago when he lost a couple to a bacterial infection, but otherwise no issues and the pond is really old. I am guessing the other large fish that died this year was possibly slightly ill for a long time given the lumps that nobody knows what they were, possibly tumours, but it did look like she had some kind of bacterial issue alongside it.


    @Kev, that is so frustrating that you lost those fish despite taking such extensive precautions! Similar age to mine - do you think that maybe it was just their time? Months and even years seems like an awfully long time for it to have been caused by a change in pond?

    @Feline no more fish coming, don't worry haha. I figured get them all in one go rather than 2 from here, 1 from there etc. I have checked for chlorine. The water quality always seems to be fine on the test results. I keep an eye on these to judge whether I am feeding too much (and to make sure it could cope with the new fish) and luckily it appears so far I am not. I call them my pond pigs because they are so greedy!

    I have a pond vac that I use on the eazypod and the bottom of the pond. It's a liner so you could be right about nasties lurking in there. I am not sure what I could do about this?


    I have noticed today that it's the 2 butterfly koi that I got a couple of months ago that seem to really be having the issues now. They are both swimming with the others but occasionally breaking the surface, grabbing air, and going back down. They are also flashing a bit and not eating. I will try to scrape them today. What do you think this sounds like please? All I can find looking around online is that this is called "lunking" but no other info, other than people have fish that do it for years and they don't know why.

    Thank you again!

  29. #17
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai algarth's Avatar
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    ''I have a pond vac that I use on the eazypod and the bottom of the pond. It's a liner so you could be right about nasties lurking in there. I am not sure what I could do about this?''

    I think that this could be your major problem. Folds and creases in the liner hold so much bad bacteria at times.
    A dose of Acriflavin and salt may help a little with the bacterial issue even though its quite mild
    Last edited by algarth; 28-08-2020 at 05:12 PM.

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  31. #18
    Thank you! It is so hard trying to fit this in between working haha

    So a stupid question.. how will I know if it's bacterial issues if I can't see them down the light microscope?

    How do people deal with folds in the liners?

  32. #19
    Just seen your edit algarth - what level would you salt to?

  33. #20
    Senior Member Rank = Nanasai algarth's Avatar
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    Hi there I use 50 kilo for 6000 gallons so 1kilo per 120 gallons
    How many gallons is your pond?

    Quote Originally Posted by laulau View Post
    Just seen your edit algarth - what level would you salt to?
    Last edited by algarth; 28-08-2020 at 05:26 PM.

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