Simply Koi and More Koi

I cannot emphases the importance of owning of a microscope and knowing on how to use the scope and knowing how to recognize the parasites that can affect Koi.
This year I have lost count of the ponds that I have visited and almost half of them had whitespot I then had a good talk with the pond owners asking them about the history of what they have been doing a vast majority of them were buying koi not knowing the importance of temperatures deference that you can have between the koi dealers ponds and their own pond and not floating the bags to equalise temperatures not only that they often empty the water from the bags into their ponds

Hi Pete
Not too sure about floating a bag in the pond,I have never done that,I check the dealer tempreture and make sure my pond is simular,then I empty the water and koi into my own measuring bowl with my own pond water in, then use my koi sock to put the koi in my pond,

I did notice at the main Japanese koi show they just dumped the koi and water straight into the vat,but they may know something I don't

Regards Geoff

Hi Geoff
As far as I am aware of the reasoning off not putting the water from the bags into your pond on transporting the Koi that’s within the bags the koi will excrete ammonia into the bags through stress at the shows that are held around the country all koi are floated for 20 mins then they are taken out of the bags with the water discarded waste
This question will be better for Syd (Manky Sanke) to answer

Hi Pete

I have to agree with the importance of being able to use a scope and diagnose what is on the slide, when I first started keeping a pond and Koi I found out through buying Koi on ebay the dangers of introducing fish into a pond and introducing nasties, calling on a fish doctor he used a scope, I only had a childrens scope which was under £20 but even on that I could see nearly all parasites, I have since bought a much better scope, but the point I am trying to make is a Microscope does not have to cost a fortune there is this one in Argos for £29.99 National Geographic 1200x Die Cast Microscope Set, well with in every budget

I'm another who never floats bags.... more stress and risk than its worth. For me when i show this is the worst bit when the benching teams float the bags before releasing the koi. As a good "showing" koi keeper you should be in the ball park with temps anyway and i don't see that trying to equal out 2-3deg C is worth the thrashing in the bags.

Koi i bring home - simply get de-bagged straight into a big bowl and then checked over for any bumps etc before going into the pond via either a sock net or bag with minimal water.

Microscope - totally agree and having owned a "lidl £40 jobbie" to begin with and now using a brunel binocular one - the difference in optics and ease of use etc is massive. I would always advise buying the best one you can justify.