New project, will take a long time

[Yanbbrox]

wow gladd to see your fish have made it through their rough spell. I always love this thread whenever it comes up. keep it up I'm still watching. (in the NON creapy sort of way lol)

They were coming up to see if you and the Mrs. were still alright!
Now they can rest well knowing their keepers are going to be there when the weather clears up...
View attachment 449639
Stay warm and Dry Brother, it sure looks cold and wet...

Thanks guys. Water temp is 0.5 c so they are not up to much. I just need to get a handle why the water won't clear and we'll be sorted.

 

[Yanbbrox]

Started to sort the blanket weed out. Scrapped it all off the walls and treated with pond balance, hopefully this will start to clear now.

Anyway the sturgeon, yet again I found one in the settling chamber, this time wedged against the strainer, managed to get it out even though it was quite stuck. I thought all these problems were behind me but it looks like at some point I need to get in and adjust the air dome than sits over the drain, obviously there is too much of a gap. This needs to be done before the frogs return and soon, trouble is I had to move some matting around and by the time my arm was under water I could not feel my hand due the cold water.


Ponds are a pain.

 

[Aquarist Andy]

Ah, no pain - no gain... But the rewards look great!

Keep up the good work

 

[Yanbbrox]

Dead fish, sick fish and now Trichodina and chilodonella, purple water, pond keeping is a real pain at times.

 

[zennzzo]

Dead fish, sick fish and now Trichodina and chilodonella, purple water, pond keeping is a real pain at times.

What the ****? what happened? Man I feel for you bro, and treating that much water can be spendy...

 

[Yanbbrox]

What the ****? what happened? Man I feel for you bro, and treating that much water can be spendy...

Basically the water is too cold and has been for too long. This has been the worse winter in living memory. Koi don't do well in less that 4 degrees c and the temp is only just up to 2.5. They have little immune system left over from last year and are pretty weak and prone to infection. Lost one last week when I went out to check, just dead?

There is another one that's been looking sick and is now out and in a holding tank inside to heat it up but it's in a bad way.

Did a scrape this morning and that showed up the parasites.

The trouble is that treating the pond will achieve little as the meds won't work in the low temps, so it's a double edge sword.

Heating the pond is out, a friend of a friend installed a heater when the weather was really bad, just got his electricity bill for the quarter and it was £1600.


One option left dose the whole pond with PP and hope(hence the purple water).

 

[zennzzo]

So the cold that makes the Koi susceptible to disease also makes the meds ineffective? That sucks...sounds like heat is the answer but at 1600 lbs. per quarter. That makes it expensive...Well sorry to hear your finned buddies are in a bad way, I hope you don't loose anymore.

BTW you do your own scrapes, and do you also look at the samples under a microscope?

Basically the water is too cold and has been for too long. This has been the worse winter in living memory. Koi don't do well in less that 4 degrees c and the temp is only just up to 2.5. They have little immune system left over from last year and are pretty weak and prone to infection. Lost one last week when I went out to check, just dead?

There is another one that's been looking sick and is now out and in a holding tank inside to heat it up but it's in a bad way.

Did a scrape this morning and that showed up the parasites.

The trouble is that treating the pond will achieve little as the meds won't work in the low temps, so it's a double edge sword.

Heating the pond is out, a friend of a friend installed a heater when the weather was really bad, just got his electricity bill for the quarter and it was £1600.


One option left dose the whole pond with PP and hope(hence the purple water).

 

[Yanbbrox]

So the cold that makes the Koi susceptible to disease also makes the meds ineffective? That sucks...sounds like heat is the answer but at 1600 lbs. per quarter. That makes it expensive...Well sorry to hear your finned buddies are in a bad way, I hope you don't loose anymore.

BTW you do your own scrapes, and do you also look at the samples under a microscope?

Tanks bro, I don't hold out much for the one in qt even though it is acting better now it's inside. It's in a bad way and has an ulcer on it's fish as well.

Notice the raised fins, that's where they are attacking:

And the ulcer:

As for your question about scrapes, I could be a real show off here as I did scrape the fish myself and looked at the results under a microscope, YEAH look at me the great koi guru

In truth I did scrape the fish and took in down to the koi guy(Nigel) in our town, where he looked in his microscope and then told me what I was looking at It was very educational, and as always he didn't charge me and gave me the PP for free as well, I've been reading some scary stories about PP since I treated, I just hope they are ok and we can get the temps up, it's supposed to be spring.

 

[zennzzo]

Yeah it would be very educational...
as far as being able to identify several of the different parasites, one would have had to look at many many samples to get good at it...
Thank God for the Nigels of the world...

 

[Yanbbrox]

Yeah it would be very educational...
as far as being able to identify several of the different parasites, one would have had to look at many many samples to get good at it...
Thank God for the Nigels of the world...

To be honest, it's simple. He was saying things like can you see the Catherine wheel shape? I was like, er yeah. That's trichodina etc. I found this site whilst reading up about parasites since I got back.
http://www.koicarp.org.uk/koi_parasites.htm

and sure enough what he said they were, looked just like they did on the slide. Fascinating stuff, if all my koi were not just about to die

It's the chilodonella that's really worrying. Words and names that meant nothing this morning, it just goes to show no matter how long and what you keep in the aquatic world you never know everything, possibly with the exception of Dr Joe.