I'm curious maybe someone actually knows why this is happening this winter. I had ponds for over 10 years but never had any problem in the winter and we had some harsh winters before. Just a little details about what happened: in the beginning of January it got colder here (i live in New Jersey) i noticed that one of my fish started swimming in the pond, as the others were just sitting on the bottom of the pond as they normally do in the winter. I though it was weird as i've never seen fish swimming laps in the winter. So i didn't actually know what to do, but just watch that fish for the whole day. unfortunately next morning i found this fish on the bottom of my pond lying on its side. it looked dead, but when i took it out thru the hole in the ice it actually still was barely alive, so i set up the quarantine tank in the garage, filled it up with cold water from the pond and put fish in it, hoping that if the water slowly warms up and it will help. i also gave it 1 injection of Baytril. luckily injecting was easy to do as fish didn't give me any resistance from it's almost dead stage. fish was just floating belly up in the tank but after about an hour after the injection the fish was already keeping itself upright and started to swim. I also put some Nitrofuracin Green in the water. i kept this fish in the garage for 10 days till weather warmed up and i slowly brought the water temperature in the tank (it was in the upper 40s F) to the pond temp. that was around 40 F then. and i released it back to the pond, and so far it's doing well in there. Now the weather got freezing again about 3 days ago, pond froze up again, and my 3 air stones and 1 deicer are only keeping 4 small holes in the ice, and 3 days ago i noticed that the other fish started to swim laps in icy cold water, so i already knew that it's definitely a bad sign, but still just watched it, but of course the story repeated itself and i found it belly up on the bottom of the pond yesterday morning: so back to the same steps again. This fish was even in the worse condition than the first one: it didn't have any movement exept i saw it's gills was very slowly opening. the injection also was very easy with it. but the result is promising now: it took much longer time to recover for this fish, it was floating belly up for 4-5 hours, but by the middle of the day the water temp warmed up from low 30 F to upper 30s F, and it's started to keep itself upright. Today it's swimming in the tank and looking fine for now. i will probably have to keep it in the garage till weather warms up. Is anybody knows why this is happening this winter? Both of this fish was purchased and shipped from Hawaii back in the summer and were fine even when it got colder till it got real cold. not sure if it has something to do that they're in the warm climate before they got here: the first one that collapsed is 3 years old and the second is 2 y.o.
So i hope this info helps if anyone has similar problem. the attached are the pictures of the sick fish: the first is the is 3 y.o. before i released it back to the pond 2 weeks ago, and the second is the sick fish that swimming in my garage now.
So i hope this info helps if anyone has similar problem. the attached are the pictures of the sick fish: the first is the is 3 y.o. before i released it back to the pond 2 weeks ago, and the second is the sick fish that swimming in my garage now.