Koi Fish Problems.

[nathan01]

Hi,

We've recently built a pond that is managed by a very good filtration system in readyness for Koi fish. There is one fish that we are very concerned about (attatched image). We took it to the person we bought it from and he gave us some cream to put on his fins as they look like they are wearing away. We was told that due to the cold temps we have had in the winter the fish has been sat on the bottom of the pond which has made him 'ill'.

After about 4 weeks, there is no improvement and it has infact moved onto the other fin. Also the top of the body is discoloured, meaning that it is slighty red/purple. The fish has also been swimming on the top of the surface, explosing around 2cm of his body to the air, again we are not sure why.

Please can you help us identify the issues here are we are very concerned. This is our favourite fish; he comes to the top of the water to be hand fed and is very tame. He's eaing normal too.

Thank You

 

[mark4785]

Hello,

The picture of the fish that you say is 'attached' is not visible anywhere. It would be great if you could provide that picture as it will make diagnosing the problem much easier.

From your description it sounds like the fish may have fin rot. My ghost carp developed this but it occurred on the mouth; when we bought the fish the employee dropped it head first on the ground and it is this trauma that I personally believe prompted the mouth rot.

Fin rot isn't exclusive to the thins, it may also occur on other parts of the body and will appear as red streaks.

My advice to you is check your ammonia and nitrite levels of the water. If they are anything above zero, do a 80% water change, and apply some pond tonic salt to calm the fish. I recommend this brand of tonic salt: click here. You may also wish to check your PH level; Koi thrive in alkaline water of between 7.6- 8.2.

Since it appears that the thin rot is spreading I'd go about treating it with Waterlife Myaxin product which can be found here.. Waterlife products are highly effective and it should hopefully stop the fin rot from getting worse providing your ammonia, nitrite and PH levels are within the optimum range. If they are not within normal range cut down on feeding by 50-75% to bring waste levels down.


Mark.

 

[nathan01]

Hello,

The picture of the fish that you say is 'attached' is not visible anywhere. It would be great if you could provide that picture as it will make diagnosing the problem much easier.

From your description it sounds like the fish may have fin rot. My ghost carp developed this but it occurred on the mouth; when we bought the fish the employee dropped it head first on the ground and it is this trauma that I personally believe prompted the mouth rot.

Fin rot isn't exclusive to the thins, it may also occur on other parts of the body and will appear as red streaks.

My advice to you is check your ammonia and nitrite levels of the water. If they are anything above zero, do a 80% water change, and apply some pond tonic salt to calm the fish. I recommend this brand of tonic salt: click here. You may also wish to check your PH level; Koi thrive in alkaline water of between 7.6- 8.2.

Since it appears that the thin rot is spreading I'd go about treating it with Waterlife Myaxin product which can be found here.. Waterlife products are highly effective and it should hopefully stop the fin rot from getting worse providing your ammonia, nitrite and PH levels are within the optimum range. If they are not within normal range cut down on feeding by 50-75% to bring waste levels down.


Mark.

Hi, I will try and get the photo on, IE7 is having problems.

I take 2 tests; NH3 and Nh4 (1 mixed test) reads 0mg/L. I also take No2 test which reads 0.3mg/L, I take these tests twice a week (I use tetra kits)

I clean the filter every day and change 10% of the water weekly, also adding to it chlorine. I also add Pond detox formula and evolution aqua pure pond bacteria. The pond detox was £54/large tub but I didn't think it did much to the water. I feed the fish in small amount about 5 times a day with Suki Hikari food (which is premium)

To the 'ill' fish we used Kusuri Koi sedate and then put it in a separate tub of water (like what is used for quarantine) and to the fins applied:

Aqua-tec Bacterial Spray
Roccal Wound Spray
Koi cream anti-inflammatory (for 3 days but stopped as it didn't do anything)
Clear eye lotion drops as it had something wrong with his eye but has since recovered.

This is the only fish that is infected so whatever the cause is, it's not contagious.
My link

If you need more images, I have a better version that was taken when the fish was out of the water.

I hope that helps, thank you very much

 

[mark4785]

I'm not that familiar with the products you are using but as they are different branded products you should check to see whether they are incompatible with one another before using them all. A singular treatment alone is stressful enough to the fish so I advice you look at each product carefully and decide which one is most effective. I'm sure that the product I advised to use (Myaxin) would contain anti-inflammatory agents and everything else necessary to stop fin rot in it's tracks. If you do decide to use a singular treatment put the fish in some fresh water with no medicine/spray concentration but ensure the temperature/PH remains consistent to avoid further stressing the fish, then start over with one effective medicinal product (preferably not sprays).

That product I mention is manufactured by Waterlife. I use their products for ammonia detoxification and algae removal and they seem to be highly effective. I suggest you give this product a go.

It does sound like the fish has a healthy diet. You may wish to try feeding it orange slices (high vitamin C content) or apply a vitamin C supplement on the food. This will hopefully help the fish restore any damage the fin rot is causing.

Lastly, you do have 0.3 ppm of nitrite in the water. Be sure to keep a close eye on this as ideally it should be 0. From my experience it will only go down to 0 if a 100% water change is conducted.

Mark.

 

[nathan01]

I'm not that familiar with the products you are using but as they are different branded products you should check to see whether they are incompatible with one another before using them all. A singular treatment alone is stressful enough to the fish so I advice you look at each product carefully and decide which one is most effective. I'm sure that the product I advised to use (Myaxin) would contain anti-inflammatory agents and everything else necessary to stop fin rot in it's tracks. If you do decide to use a singular treatment put the fish in some fresh water with no medicine/spray concentration but ensure the temperature/PH remains consistent to avoid further stressing the fish, then start over with one effective medicinal product (preferably not sprays).

That product I mention is manufactured by Waterlife. I use their products for ammonia detoxification and algae removal and they seem to be highly effective. I suggest you give this product a go.

It does sound like the fish has a healthy diet. You may wish to try feeding it orange slices (high vitamin C content) or apply a vitamin C supplement on the food. This will hopefully help the fish restore any damage the fin rot is causing.

Lastly, you do have 0.3 ppm of nitrite in the water. Be sure to keep a close eye on this as ideally it should be 0. From my experience it will only go down to 0 if a 100% water change is conducted.

Mark.

The products I have used were purchased at the same store I bought the fish, after showing the seller images of the fin rot (and previously eye condition).My Dad said he will have a look at the product you mentioned and give that a shot, and we are starting to feed them orange slices (we've seen this in the store too)

The water tests we use have shown a slightly higher nitrite reading today so we will do what we can (as suggested) to reduce that, though a 100% water change isn't really a option for us.

Do you know what could be causing the fin rot as it's only happening to this one fish. Is fin rot a common fush problem? The fish itself is 'happy', it comes to the top of the pond, like the other fish but also lets you hand feem him which is why he's out favourite. Should we be concerned about the slight red on the top of his body? Is there anything we can do to reduce/remove this too?

Thank You

Nathan

 

[mark4785]

As I said in my initial post, my ghost carp was injured by the local fish store employee and a few months later the mouth tissue was starting to disappear. It is not the injury itself that causes fin/mouth rot, the injury would probably cause wounding or scale displacement which then gets invaded by bacteria in the pond water which causes the tissue to rot away. There doesn't have to be physical injury to prompt fin/mouth rot; instead the water parameters (mainly PH, ammonia and nitrite) may cause minor skin irritation at low concentrations which causes the fish's skin to be highly vulnerable to bacterial infection.

I think it is important that you address the skin inflammation on the body, it is undoubtedly irritated skin harboring bacterial infection. The best way to help speed up the healing process of the skin would be to place a 0.9% concentration of pond tonic salt in the fish's water (I recommend Blagdon or Waterlife tonic salt). This will cause something called reverse osmosis whereby water and its various properties are drawn out of the fish rather than into it. The result is that the irritated skin will be able to heal faster and the salt should also kill off some of the bacteria by dehydrating it. Note: The fish will not become dehydrated so don't worry!

The 0.9% concentration of salt should be added to the fish's environment over 3-4 days, so place 0.3% of salt in on day 1 and the same amount for days 2 and 3. Putting it all in at once will be very stressful for the fish.

On day 1-2 you should add your first dosage of Myxazin. The product is not incompatible with salt/salt water.

Here is where Myxazin can be ordered from: click here. You can also find it on eBay etc.

Mark.

 

[nathan01]

As I said in my initial post, my ghost carp was injured by the local fish store employee and a few months later the mouth tissue was starting to disappear. It is not the injury itself that causes fin/mouth rot, the injury would probably cause wounding or scale displacement which then gets invaded by bacteria in the pond water which causes the tissue to rot away. There doesn't have to be physical injury to prompt fin/mouth rot; instead the water parameters (mainly PH, ammonia and nitrite) may cause minor skin irritation at low concentrations which causes the fish's skin to be highly vulnerable to bacterial infection.

I think it is important that you address the skin inflammation on the body, it is undoubtedly irritated skin harboring bacterial infection. The best way to help speed up the healing process of the skin would be to place a 0.9% concentration of pond tonic salt in the fish's water (I recommend Blagdon or Waterlife tonic salt). This will cause something called reverse osmosis whereby water and its various properties are drawn out of the fish rather than into it. The result is that the irritated skin will be able to heal faster and the salt should also kill off some of the bacteria by dehydrating it. Note: The fish will not become dehydrated so don't worry!

The 0.9% concentration of salt should be added to the fish's environment over 3-4 days, so place 0.3% of salt in on day 1 and the same amount for days 2 and 3. Putting it all in at once will be very stressful for the fish.

On day 1-2 you should add your first dosage of Myxazin. The product is not incompatible with salt/salt water.

Here is where Myxazin can be ordered from: click here. You can also find it on eBay etc.

Mark.

The Myxazin, do I take the fish out of the pond and put it in a seperate tank? The fish weight 12lbs and is around 60cm long.

We've just done a water test and the nitrite is 0.3 mg/l and the ammonia is 0. We are currently pumping 50L of air into the filter do you think I need another air pump as their seems to be mixed reviews on it. Out pond is 3000 Gallons.

 

[mark4785]

It would be ideal if you could treat in a separate tank as it will be costly treating a pond with a capacity of 3000 gallons. It would be brilliant to pump air (oxygen) into the separate tank via use of an airpump as it will liven the fish up and the naturally occurring bacteria named nitrosomonus (this consumes ammonia) and nitrobacter (this consumes nitrite) will grow and colonize your filter media (sponges) much more quickly.

If you are to treat it in a separate tank I highly recommend transferring some filter sponge from your pond's filter system and installing it in your tanks filter system as the sponge will contain lots of nitrifying bacteria that will begin to oxidise the ammonia your fish produces in the tank. If you do not have any spare sponge to use you will need to do 1-2 50-75% water changes each day to stop the ammonia level rising.

You could equally treat the fish in the pond as the medicine is not harmful to filter bacteria, water using wildlife or plants. Only problem is you will need to buy much more medicine to treat all 3000 gallons of water! Note: You are required to remove your UV light water clarifier and carbon/zeolite filter media before and during treatment as it will not work if these are installed in your filter system.

 

[nathan01]

We have a separate large plastic container that we used when we sedated the fish and fixed his eye, but there isn't a lot of room for him to swim about. The fins are getting worse as the days go by and sometimes the fish just sits on the bottom of the pond.

Just a few minutes ago it jumped out the water and landed on out lawn. Firstly it hit the paving then ended up on the grass but he's not back in the pond, again just sitting on the bottom.

Out filter uses plastic nodules (nexus Range) so the bacterium isn’t kept trapped like it would be with a traditional sponge-media type filter... Is the Myxazin mainly treated for tanks, hence the small amount per bottle, or is it used for quarantine too? (We would need around 100 bottles in order to treat the whole pond, so that is not an option really)

We have an air pump that injects air into the filter system (in order for it to work) but we also have a large air disc that we could possible use, should we keep the ill fish in separate waters.

The nitrite levels are going up and down, but are never higher than 0.3mg/L. We have reduced feeding to twice a day too.

We're getting very worried about this fish, he doesn't seem to be getting any better and it's disheartening to see his fins in such a bad way.

Thank you very much for your help.

Nathan

 

[nathan01]

Here's a youtube link for a video of the fish and our filter/pond layout.

Fish

 

[nathan01]

We've carried out a 50% water change (1500 gallons) and have tested the water. The Ammonia is 0mg/L but the Nitrite/Nitrate remain at above 0.3mg/L. We will possible look into buying more expensive testing kits and a Ph tester too. Feeding has been reduced to twice a day.

What else can we do to reduce Nitrite/Nitrate? I'm looking into what exactly these are but I understand they 'convert' into each other.

Thank You