Having trouble with diagnosing the problem

[WaterGardener]

Thank.you for getting those tests and posting the results.

The only thing I see that could be an issue is the nitrite. Nitrite is very toxic, but should not be a problem at the level of your pond water. It may be a symptom that your pond has not fully cycled and it will go down when that process is complete. Nitrite ideally should never be above zero.

You can use Prime by Seachem to bind the nitrite. It will prevent it from damaging the fish. Used for that purpose it will last no more than 48 hours, so it should be dosed every other day until the nitrite is gone.

The nitrate is fine. I wish mine were as low.

If that doesn't help your fish, or water changes to dilute the nitrite don't help, you can can do a shotgun treatment of the pond. I would rather not go there, since no one knows what the problem is, but if this is a bacterial or fungal infection, it should take care of it.

I would recommend using Proform C and treat according to the directions. I think it's a three day process. (It's very important to know the volume of water in the pond to know the dosage.) With the last treatment, I would treat for flukes as well, and mix Fluke-M with the Proform C.

I hope things improve soon.

 

[Charlie West]

@Charlie West “Pond cycling,” the way we refer to it, is a series of processes that happen over time (weeks or longer), where you have a “nitrogen cycle” take place, where different bacteria (beneficial bacteria, not the kind that cause disease) act on waste materials in the water (produced by the fish and/or by rotting organic waste), converting them from toxic ammonia to nitrates, which are safe. Maybe, I should have said NITROGEN CYCLE to begin with. Sorry.

As for the microscope reference, that’s only useful if you are trying to treat a SPECIFIC disease on the fish. Different meds treat different diseases. No, not suggesting you get a microscope, just saying that in order to treat the fish, you need to know WHAT you’re treating. I think you are past that point.

Please don’t give up! We all know how frustrating this can be. Can you get rid of about 1/2 the fish you have now? Not to sound cruel, but the sicker ones can be humanely euthanized……….but your fish load needs to be reduced. 3000 gallons is only meant to contain a few koi (3 or 4 at most).

View attachment 159950

Thankyou for the info, we knew by draining the pond we would be getting rid of all the beneficial bacteria, again, lack of experience and a knee kerk reaction over the dead fish, we thought getting rid of the "contaminated" water was more important than destroying the bb. We've made a bit of a mess of things haven't we?!

I don't think we have any more sick fish, although we could be proved wrong, still have the problem with the white patches though. Hoping that by reducing stock and letting the bb build back up things should settle. I will keep all you lovely 'pond people in my phone' updated! It's good to know you are all here to help.

 

[Charlie West]

Thank.you for getting those tests and posting the results.

The only thing I see that could be an issue is the nitrite. Nitrite is very toxic, but should not be a problem at the level of your pond water. It may be a symptom that your pond has not fully cycled and it will go down when that process is complete. Nitrite ideally should never be above zero.

You can use Prime by Seachem to bind the nitrite. It will prevent it from damaging the fish. Used for that purpose it will last no more than 48 hours, so it should be dosed every other day until the nitrite is gone.

The nitrate is fine. I wish mine were as low.

If that doesn't help your fish, or water changes to dilute the nitrite don't help, you can can do a shotgun treatment of the pond. I would rather not go there, since no one knows what the problem is, but if this is a bacterial or fungal infection, it should take care of it.

I would recommend using Proform C and treat according to the directions. I think it's a three day process. (It's very important to know the volume of water in the pond to know the dosage.) With the last treatment, I would treat for flukes as well, and mix Fluke-M with the Proform C.

I hope things improve soon.

I think we will let the pond fully cycle and see where we are then, whilst checking water quality regularly and doing partial water changes.

Thankyou for the suggestions of treatments, I will keep a record of those if things don't improve. Just feeling reluctant at this point to add any more treatments as we don't want to put any more stress on the fish than is necessary. Plus as you say, we don't know what we are treating for. We won't give up though!

 

[WaterGardener]

Actually, there is very little beneficial bacteria in the water. It grows mainly on hard surfaces and on the media in your filter. You may have removed some by power washing the liner, but not very much from changing the water.

Honestly, if my pond water smelled bad, I would do the same thing. I have drained it and refilled it before, after a run off issue that was corrected years ago that dumped mud into the pond. There were no problems with the fish. They actually seemed to enjoy playing in the strong stream of water while refilling. So it seems there was something else going on in your pond.

I hope things improve quickly.

 

[GBBUDD]

We did jet wash as we had an unusually high growth of blanket weed anyway

Power washing when blanket weed appears if it's truly blanket weed is wiping any aging you may have had in the nitrogen cycle and your now startingover. It can take a year or two even for a pond to get established to the pond that blanket/ hair algae gets neutralized.
Blanket weed is often mistaken for a bad thing . It is beneficial to a pond but it needs to have something else take over and establish its self so it out competes hair algae for the available food.
Now often we have folks come to the site who think they have a problem when they just have an inch or two long filimataous algae that grows on the rocks. And if you watch your fish they eat this gold fish and koi can almost live off this indefinitely.

Hair algae IF you have an adequate filtration system will go away on it'd own in time but it can take some time. I had pockets in the main pond for about two years . But now I just have some in the stream and occasionally on the waterfalls. But I consider this to be an algae scrubber. Where it will filter the water before it goes back to the Main pond.

Even if the pond has some hair algae if you feed very little or not at all.the fish will nibble next to it eventually cleaning house.

 

[Charlie West]

Actually, there is very little beneficial bacteria in the water. It grows mainly on hard surfaces and on the media in your filter. You may have removed some by power washing the liner, but not very much from changing the water.

Honestly, if my pond water smelled bad, I would do the same thing. I have drained it and refilled it before, after a run off issue that was corrected years ago that dumped mud into the pond. There were no problems with the fish. They actually seemed to enjoy playing in the strong stream of water while refilling. So it seems there was something else going on in your pond.

I hope things improve quickly.

Thanks, this is good to know about the beneficial bacteria being found on rocks and in the filter, rather than in the water itself.

I'm glad your fish suffered no ill effects from draining and refilling, you mention how they enjoyed playing in the stream of water. We have one beautiful koi, bright orange with white fins, I think he's a butterfly koi. He has a permanent negative buoyancy swim bladder, had it since being a tiddler. He's about 6 years old now. He's a real character, nothing seems to phase him at all. He has this haphazard way of swimming using his pectoral fins which is really sweet, but he manages really well, he's my favourite!

 

[Mgessert]

I agree the problem was probably the nitrite, which may have been much higher when the problem began. It is very toxic, and should be zero.

 

[Charlie West]

Power washing when blanket weed appears if it's truly blanket weed is wiping any aging you may have had in the nitrogen cycle and your now startingover. It can take a year or two even for a pond to get established to the pond that blanket/ hair algae gets neutralized.
Blanket weed is often mistaken for a bad thing . It is beneficial to a pond but it needs to have something else take over and establish its self so it out competes hair algae for the available food.
Now often we have folks come to the site who think they have a problem when they just have an inch or two long filimataous algae that grows on the rocks. And if you watch your fish they eat this gold fish and koi can almost live off this indefinitely.

Hair algae IF you have an adequate filtration system will go away on it'd own in time but it can take some time. I had pockets in the main pond for about two years . But now I just have some in the stream and occasionally on the waterfalls. But I consider this to be an algae scrubber. Where it will filter the water before it goes back to the Main pond.

Even if the pond has some hair algae if you feed very little or not at all.the fish will nibble next to it eventually cleaning house.

This is really interesting, Thankyou. In our pond it's hair/stringy blanket weed which usually ebbs and flows in its quantities. At the time of draining the pond we had 'hairs' that were about 2 feet long maybe more, and there was a lot of it. We will have a think about pond plants to add that will compete with the blanket weed therefore balancing things out. Our fish are eating, however not as much just now, so we can reduce the amount of feed to see if the fish nibble away at what is now returning on the rocks and liner.

 

[GBBUDD]

The fish love horizontal items like large boulders and when I did have hair algae if I removed the long stuff and then brushed the short stuff on their favorite rocks they kept them algae free. I was a tad different though as i loaded up my pond wanting the levels to spike so the nitrafication cycle grew quicker.

 

[WaterGardener]

String algae is easy to remove with a scrub brush. I have none of that in the pond, but have to regularly remove it from the waterfall. A toilet brush taped to a bamboo tomato stake is my go to tool for that job. It is easy to wrap the string algae around the brush and pull it out.

 

[Charlie West]

String algae is easy to remove with a scrub brush. I have none of that in the pond, but have to regularly remove it from the waterfall. A toilet brush taped to a bamboo tomato stake is my go to tool for that job. It is easy to wrap the string algae around the brush and pull it out.

This is a brilliant idea thankyou!

 

[Lisak1]

@Charlie West kudos to you for hearing the hard stuff and being willing to learn and understand. Lots of folks just run from the answers they get here and we never see or hear from them again. You'll do fine going forward.

 

[WaterGardener]

This is a brilliant idea!

Very high-tech for sure!

 

[Charlie West]

@Charlie West kudos to you for hearing the hard stuff and being willing to learn and understand. Lots of folks just run from the answers they get here and we never see or hear from them again. You'll do fine going forward.

I (we, I'm relaying info to my husband) came to this forum to genuinely ask for help and you all did not disappoint. No one has been rude or judgemental which is really refreshing in the current cyber climate! We have learnt a great deal over the past few days too, so although it has been a little hard to hear we are doing some things wrong, it's all been really constructive and we can now put things right. Knowledge is power after all!

 

[YShahar]

I (we, I'm relaying info to my husband) came to this forum to genuinely ask for help and you all did not disappoint. No one has been rude or judgemental which is really refreshing in the current cyber climate! We have learnt a great deal over the past few days too, so although it has been a little hard to hear we are doing some things wrong, it's all been really constructive and we can now put things right. Knowledge is power after all!

You've definitely come to the right place! One of the great things about this forum is that there are some very knowledgeable people who have learned from experience, and are willing to volunteer their time to help out. Plus, it's fun to exchange ideas with others who love water gardening.

My pond is about the same size as yours. I've got one rescued koi in it, and a bunch of goldfish and gambuzias. My Larger Half (aka, His Honour the Chef) wants koi, but at the moment, I don't have enough filtration. Eventually (once the bog filter is running) I plan to have as many as four koi, along with the current handful of goldfish. I probably wouldn't want more than that in this size of pond. It can be done, but requires more attention to filtration and aeration than I'm willing to invest. My pond is mostly designed as a garden feature, so the fish are sort of an afterthought.

By the way, how about some photos of your pond?! We love photos (aka, pond porn)!

Cheers,

-Yael