Mistakes after mistakes... Can I still do something?

[Drakoi]

Hey there,

I am kind of desperate and new to this hobby.

I am facing one problem after another, possibly because I am not doing a good job.

IN fact I do not know where to start my topic. From today's ulcers? From possibly wrong not-completed treatment with FMG mixture? From the introduction of fishes without quarantine?

RIght now, I am running my pond without any chemicals. And a hospital on Antiflavin and salt.
I probably have some kind of parasite that I cannot scrape. (Micrscope is in customs in DHL) and my fish started getting bacterial infections (ulcers) that I dont know how to treat? Have in mind the pond is big with 100+ kois. some small some 1 years old.

I am REALLY lost. I dont know where to start.

[Manky Sanke]

Don't despair you have come to the right place but you have made a few mistakes and you now need to start tackling the situation correctly so here is some standard advice.

Water parameters are the first thing to check when there is a problem. Bad parameters can cause health problems directly or weaken the immune system so that a fish succumbs to a pathogen it could otherwise have resisted. Even if poor water quality doesn't play a part in initiating the problem, koi have a much better chance of recovering in good water than in bad.

The minimum parameters you should check are pH, ammonia and nitrite. Oxygen is an important parameter that should be measured unless you are certain that you have very, very good aeration not just one or two air stones. Nitrate and KH can also give valuable information to help interpreting other parameters.

The level of nitrate when compared with the levels of ammonia and nitrite gives valuable information about the health/maturity of your biofilter. KH is the key to a stable pH so whilst its value doesn't have a direct impact on koi health, it is directly responsible for stabilising the pH which does have an important impact on koi health.

If any water parameter is incorrect then it should be brought to an acceptable value as quickly as possible so as not to unnecessarily delay any medical treatment.

It is likely that you have introduced something with your unquarantined fish but this isn't certain and is, as yet, unidentified anyway which means that you shouldn't begin treatment until you know what you're treating. So while you wait for your microscope which will help decide what treatment you need, get these tests done and give us the results. The pond size and water temperature will be helpful too.

[Drakoi]

Hey Manke Sanke,

Thank you for your interest.

I have done some tests and here are the result.
PH=8.5
KH= 7dkh
NH3/4= 0
NO2=0

The pond is 13k liters a bit short in length but a bit deep about 4 meters.

It has about 80 kois of different sizes with the biggest been 4 which are a year and a half years old.

Running on Nexus 310 filter for about 1 year and UV which wasnt working well for a while (we fixed it recently)

I live in Cyprus so we have quite some algae in the pond.

[Duncan]

hi I don't know your name and I cant be calling you DraKoi

you don't need to worry about KH and pH that's acceptable

that's a lot of fish in 2.8k gallons if they were all 4" long that would be 320" of fish which is waaaaay to many|! the max should be 150" of fish~~~

two questions to start with well three 4 meters deep is that correct or a typo error?

do you have a bottom drain?
and when you tested for Nh3 did you allow 20 minutes for the correct colour to develop? most kits take 20 minutes to get the full development of the colour

duncan

[Drakoi]

Hey Duncan,

You can call me Harry as my British friends do or Charalambos (with silent C).

We stock many because at the time it seem a good idea to sell them. Now ofc we dont, because of this situation.

The pond is NOT 4 meters deep. It is 1.5 meters deep. It seemed a bit deeper in my mind.

Yes it is bottom drain. And the values for NH3 was done with a sera test box which require five minutes for the colour to develop. Sera NH3 test chart start from 0 and jumps to 0.5. The result test was yellow with a slight touch of green but not even close to the green of 0.5 . What I am saying it is that there has to be some ammonia but it is very little.

[Duncan]

can you get Chloramine T where you are

dunc

[Drakoi]

I am not 100% sure but I think it is possible if I order it online.

[Duncan]

hi if you can it might be worth running f a few doses to reduced the bacteria while your scope arrives to see what your dealing with

dunc

[Drakoi]

Hey there.

We finally got our microscope today (apex practitioner) and we discover that the parasite we were fighting was Gill Flukes. I am not very sure whether it is a gill flukes or skin flukes, I only difference that I know it is the "crown" that the gill flukes does not have.

In your book you recommend Chloramine T with respect to ph and hardness. However, my father is not a patient man so he straight away used Flukes M. Hopefully, he did not do something wrong.

p.s Recently, since we thought it was a bacterial issue, we realize that some pipes were having a not recyclable water so we cleaned them. Also the guy with the most bacterial infection was covered in gill flukes. Hopefully, he makes it.

[Duncan]

keep us posted fluke m should do it but you need to treat twice a week apart

dunc

[Drakoi]

Already ordered the second dose. Hopefully it makes it on time. If not , I will repeat the treatment from the start.

Also some of the small black and red kois (2 of them) seem to have white scales on the top as if of a bacterial infection. But I cannot be sure. I will try uploading a picture if I manage to get them. It is not white , white , it is kind of yellowish white. I dont know if hat should ring some bells.


EDIT!!!!: (Update) I have bad news and good news. The bad new is that I scraped one of the fishes that was ready to die to discover that it has COSTIA!!! The good news is that I now know how they look under my microscope.

[Duncan]

as soon as you can you need to run and malachite green and formaldehyde getting on top of the costia is priority

dunc

[Drakoi]

A hobbist-professional kind of guy came to me and had a look. He said that I shouldnt be using FMG because I am not sure of the exact size of my pond (which is true) Also he said that the fish look fine. If they had a serious problem they would be rubbing and been FULL of ulcers and scraches.

In my previous post I said that it is 12.5 klitres. HOwever, this guy told me that there is no chance my pond is that much and he estimated it been 6-7 klitres. Ofc he noted that it is overstocked and he sai that I will be faced with more problems/deaths as I go.

He said tht we shouldnt be treating with FMG. Just set up the hospital for the two which have some bacterial infection. And treat the one ulcer of the bigger ones.

BEcause we are started indeed we might over dramatize things. For example finding costia on the dieing fish was pretty serious to us. However, I did not find on others.

I would like your input on this please.

It is also true that for the last few weeks, we are feeding little, we stress fish by catching them with nets, moving them to hospital and back.

[Drakoi]

Ok 6 days later after the first dose of flukes M, we did the second dose.

We did not do any treatment for costia as we could not find costia on the other fish. Neither do they seem weaken or bad plus we decided to leave them a bit quite stressing them with the nets.

Since then , we had no other dead fish. Its been few days since. Fish seem okay. We definitely have an eye on them.

There is one guy however who needs some topic treatment and we do not feel very confident to perform. At some point we will have to do it. Hopefully, in the next few days.

[Geoff9]

Hi Harry
I'm a bit confused if you don't know your pond volume how did you know how much Fluke M to use, not too sure if you can buy Duncan's book were you are but it would be a wise investment.

Regards Geoff