Is this koi lymphocystis?

[thebiggerthebetter]

What you do is it a rescue or non for profit?

The rescue is a small part of the overall effort, perhaps 5%. Mostly it is a DIY Public Aquarium, which is just about to open for business after 8 years of construction. If God is willing.

We are not a nonprofit because we funded our venture with our retirement funds. IRS mandates this scenario to be for profit because it regards this an investment of retirement funds. Corp C is the only option.

We have a lot of fish go through our hands, including koi. I've no time or money to chase serious health issues. Whatever I can do with the meds I can buy easily I do. Beyond that, the main effort will suffer and we'll be losing money and everybody loses that way.

The rescue only loses money overall anyway. It is not a profitable activity. We do it as a bona fide service to the community.

 

[kendragon]

I feel for you and your dedication to fish keeping for the public.
Meds are after the fact. With a large and expensive collection like yours have you considered taking it to the next level of UV sterilization. Most if not all public aquariums are designed with some form of disease control. I've done analysis for several public attractions and the designers all require UV as part of the aquarium. One outbreak can wipe out the collection. Sure small tanks like mine can get by without but yours is a whole different ball game.
I know it comes down to cost vs loss but consider prevention vs reaction. I definitely cannot handle the stress of sick fish. Get a sponsor or build your own. For disease, it's not a matter of if but when. Read up on redox potential.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I feel for you and your dedication to fish keeping for the public.
Meds are after the fact. With a large and expensive collection like yours have you considered taking it to the next level of UV sterilization. Most if not all public aquariums are designed with some form of disease control. I've done analysis for several public attractions and the designers all require UV as part of the aquarium. One outbreak can wipe out the collection. Sure small tanks like mine can get by without but yours is a whole different ball game.
I know it comes down to cost vs loss but consider prevention vs reaction. I definitely cannot handle the stress of sick fish. Get a sponsor or build your own. For disease, it's not a matter of if but when. Read up on redox potential.

Thank you, boss. Thank you for the advising. Good points. Appreciate it all. Yes, have been thinking about it since after you first had mentioned it to me some months back. I even pulled out my old koi-pond UV sterilizer out of storage. Need to find time to hook it up to one of the pipes.

 

[kendragon]

Thank you, boss. Thank you for the advising. Good points. Appreciate it all. Yes, have been thinking about it since after you first had mentioned it to me some months back. I even pulled out my old koi-pond UV sterilizer out of storage. Need to find time to hook it up to one of the pipes.

Not that easy. The wattage must match the water volume. I'm advising that you need stage II sterilization. Zoos and public aquariums are spec'd for at least 60mJ/cm^2.
PM me your water vol and I'll crunch the numbers for you. I pretty sure you need a multi bulb system with amalgam lamps.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Not that easy. The wattage must match the water volume. I'm advising that you need stage II sterilization. Zoos and public aquariums are spec'd for at least 60mJ/cm^2.
PM me your water vol and I'll crunch the numbers for you. I pretty sure you need a multi bulb system with amalgam lamps.

Thank you much, Ken. The system consists of two 4500 gal tanks (each filled to about 4000 gal) and a 15,000 gal sump that's filled to about 14,000 gal. So roughy 22,000 gal.

If you don't mind, we could continue this here even though this is off direct topic.

 

[kendragon]

No problem.
Before we get started. Here are the parameters:
22,000 total gallons
1 turn per hour = 366gpm (we'll use 400gpm).

The 1 turn per hour is just used for the calculation and does not mean you have to throttle the flow rate to match. It really is bogus advice when one says to slow the flow for a higher dosage.
A multi bulb unit should be considered to save space and better efficiency. Single bulb chambers allow the pathogen to hide behind particles as it passes, escaping the UV. Single bulbs shine on one side of the pathogen only. While multi bulb units allow the pathogen to flow between bulbs which gives a 360 degrees burn. Nothing you can do about the ones flowing between the bulb and chamber wall.
Stay tuned.

 

[kendragon]

The Percent Transmittance (%T) that I will use in this exercise is 90%T.
For aquatics, a low pressure lamp at 254 nm is used to determine %T independently for a 1cm path length.
I will assume you have clear water. Hence, I will go with 90%T. Otherwise, 80%T for murky water.
Some times salt water designs would request we go with 80%T in the calc......Scientist.

 

[kendragon]

Most UV chambers use standard pipe as their main chamber which makes sense. Cylinder are good pressure vessels. The ends with flat bulkheads are where the high stresses are but end caps are made thick to compensate.
Let's consider 8" dia sch 80 to be our main chamber. Nice and thick to handle 4' long lamps. If this is not wide enough to hold the number of bulbs we need, we may have to go up to a 10" dia.
You want the narrowest chamber possible to keep the pathogen close to the bulbs but at the same time accommodate the lamp spacing. Lamp spacing should be such that when the pathogen is midspan between the bulbs that it get the full dosage needed (designed). Remember, highest dosage is on the surface of the quartz sleeve and lower as you move perpendicularly away.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

I don't want to disrupt your train of thought as it is flowing and I am following with interest.

Just three quick things. Spectroscopy, measurement of light, the interaction of light and matter, mercury vapor UV lamps, lasers, etc. are not foreign to me. It feels like you want to set up a Rayonet UV light reactor in a pipe something I've used extensively in my grad school and beyond.

22,000 GPH is a huge flow. The system at hand is run by eight pumps, four per each 4500 gal tank and each pump pumps 5000 GPH at the head pressure that I have. So, each tank has four 3" pipes going from the sump to the tank and receives 20,000 GPH. The pumps are in the sump. The water drains by gravity from the tanks into the sump.

I see this is going to be pretty expensive to set up and to run too. It makes me sceptical of when or if I will be able to implement it (we have $5000 in our bank account right now for all our livelihood and business needs, some impending expenses, no debt, and no sponsors anywhere on the horizon) but I much, much appreciate your effort and want to learn it all to the end.

My existing UV sterilizer houses 4' lamp and it cost ~$450 back in 2009. I naively thought that perhaps I could get away with inserting it into one pipe but now it looks like even if I had 8 of them and inserted the UV lights in all 8 pipes, it won't be enough.

Nevertheless, as stated, I want to know it all, if you are willing to go on.

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I agree it looks like a tumor. The best bet at this point is biopsy. Are you in you in Florida? I have an awesome veterinary pathologist down there you can send the sample to.

To finish off the OP theme, today I released both koi into a large natural lake on our property. Perhaps mother nature will heal them... or not. If they survive, and it's a huge if, I might get a chance to recapture them one particularly dry season, when all our ponds and lakes run almost dry.

 

[kendragon]

When we talk about multi bulb systems, we are talking about three or more bulbs.
Why?
Think about it. Two bulbs cannot fill the a round pattern symetrically. This would allow dead zones. Three bulbs, you can arrange in a triangle, filling the round chamber symetrically and can minimize the low dosage zone.
Advantages of a multi bulb UV system are higher flow rate, less friction loss and better UV dosage. This is speaking for large volume tanks.
Monster systems like waste water treatment uses what we call "Open Channel UV System". This system does not use a chamber but channels the water to flow through open rows of UV lamps.