This is going to be a long post, so Ill keep the actual questions short and up front:
1) can you diagnose a dead fish for parasites, and roughly how long after he died? Hours or a day? Longer? Would putting it in a fridge or freezer help conserve the parasite? Should I keep it dry or wet?
2) I have an ancient, but I think very high quality microscope (used to be my father's lab scope some 30 years ago), but without lightsource, just a mirror. I can magnify all I want, up to 1600x, but am I going to have any chance of seeing parasites with a mirror? What about when shining a flashlight on it?
3) anyone have a link to help me get started with diagnosing with a scope? How I should take samples, pictures of parasites that I should be looking for with a given magnification, etc.
4) whats wrong with my fish? Ok, thats not a real question, but see below.
Background: 3 weeks ago my super dirty pond emptied itself by accident, leaving the fish grasping in thick mud. All of them were rescued, moved to a tiny temporary pond. About a week later, I started refilling the pond and after a few days, I put the fish back. For the past week, it has been filling up gradually (its large), with fish friendly tap water.
Significantly, 2 weeks ago, I also bought 10 healthy looking baby koi from a non dealer.
My pond is large (50K liter), very lightly stocked (1 large koi, 8 or so medium, and a bunch of goldfish, baby koi and some other fish). My water tests absolutely fine with my drop test kit. No measurable ammonia or nitrites, stable Ph of 7.5, decent GH and KH.
Symptoms:
Most of the baby koi are dying I fear. One already died, The others are often floating helplessly, tail up or tail down, sideways. Some of them seem covered in slime. Almost all of them have clamped fins. Note, they werent like this when I bought them. But they might have had a temperature shock, as my pond was still (too) cold when I put them in. They are barely eating and not getting better despite the water warming up.
My older Koi have recently also began showing symptoms of stress and/or illness. They all flash more often then Id like, and increasingly so, and my oldest and biggest koi I noticed today has a red veins in his tall fin. Put all together, something aint right! Although all the non baby koi otherwise behave normally, not scared, they eat a lot, they swim normally, aside from the occasional flashing. No other signs I can see besides the one red tail fin.
Most of these signs, at least for the big ones, could be explained by stress, from changing ponds, changing water, me working in and around the pond, but the symptoms are getting worse, not better and they have been in the same pond, with stable water for 1 or 2 weeks now. Mostly, they just dont seem stressed. Add to that the problems with the small ones, and I think something bad is up.
Problem:
Its a big pond, and I simply cant catch them! Not even the ailing baby kois that float around as if dead, if a net comes anywhere near them, its like they have a 6th sense and they sprint to the other side of the pond like speedy gonzales. And I dont want to stress them even more trying endlessly.
If symptoms with the big koi get worse, I will grab a big one, that might be doable while feeding. In the mean time, I was thinking of waiting if or until one of the small ones dies, and if so, have it diagnosed or try myself, depending on the answers above. If I cant do it myself, it might be a full day before I can get it to a koi dealer though, and so that is also why I wonder if there is a point in that.
1) can you diagnose a dead fish for parasites, and roughly how long after he died? Hours or a day? Longer? Would putting it in a fridge or freezer help conserve the parasite? Should I keep it dry or wet?
2) I have an ancient, but I think very high quality microscope (used to be my father's lab scope some 30 years ago), but without lightsource, just a mirror. I can magnify all I want, up to 1600x, but am I going to have any chance of seeing parasites with a mirror? What about when shining a flashlight on it?
3) anyone have a link to help me get started with diagnosing with a scope? How I should take samples, pictures of parasites that I should be looking for with a given magnification, etc.
4) whats wrong with my fish? Ok, thats not a real question, but see below.
Background: 3 weeks ago my super dirty pond emptied itself by accident, leaving the fish grasping in thick mud. All of them were rescued, moved to a tiny temporary pond. About a week later, I started refilling the pond and after a few days, I put the fish back. For the past week, it has been filling up gradually (its large), with fish friendly tap water.
Significantly, 2 weeks ago, I also bought 10 healthy looking baby koi from a non dealer.
My pond is large (50K liter), very lightly stocked (1 large koi, 8 or so medium, and a bunch of goldfish, baby koi and some other fish). My water tests absolutely fine with my drop test kit. No measurable ammonia or nitrites, stable Ph of 7.5, decent GH and KH.
Symptoms:
Most of the baby koi are dying I fear. One already died, The others are often floating helplessly, tail up or tail down, sideways. Some of them seem covered in slime. Almost all of them have clamped fins. Note, they werent like this when I bought them. But they might have had a temperature shock, as my pond was still (too) cold when I put them in. They are barely eating and not getting better despite the water warming up.
My older Koi have recently also began showing symptoms of stress and/or illness. They all flash more often then Id like, and increasingly so, and my oldest and biggest koi I noticed today has a red veins in his tall fin. Put all together, something aint right! Although all the non baby koi otherwise behave normally, not scared, they eat a lot, they swim normally, aside from the occasional flashing. No other signs I can see besides the one red tail fin.
Most of these signs, at least for the big ones, could be explained by stress, from changing ponds, changing water, me working in and around the pond, but the symptoms are getting worse, not better and they have been in the same pond, with stable water for 1 or 2 weeks now. Mostly, they just dont seem stressed. Add to that the problems with the small ones, and I think something bad is up.
Problem:
Its a big pond, and I simply cant catch them! Not even the ailing baby kois that float around as if dead, if a net comes anywhere near them, its like they have a 6th sense and they sprint to the other side of the pond like speedy gonzales. And I dont want to stress them even more trying endlessly.
If symptoms with the big koi get worse, I will grab a big one, that might be doable while feeding. In the mean time, I was thinking of waiting if or until one of the small ones dies, and if so, have it diagnosed or try myself, depending on the answers above. If I cant do it myself, it might be a full day before I can get it to a koi dealer though, and so that is also why I wonder if there is a point in that.
. Hope it wont be a dead one.