Help me please...koi are dying

[poconojoe]

While reading your posts, I kept saying to myself don't use those mosquito dunks. I know from reading their instructions that they claim no harm to plants or fish, but I wouldn't trust that. Plus, as long as the water has movement (not stagnant), there should be no worries of mosquito larvae. And your fish should also keep anything like that at bay anyway.
I never add any chemicals to my pond. No magical sludge removers, no salt, no vinegar, etc. When adding water, I do use water conditioner to remove the chlorine from my town's central water system. But that's the only thing I add. Once your pond is established, as long as you have good filtration, aeration and plant life, it should be pretty much self sufficient.

 

[poconojoe]

Oh, I'm glad you also mentioned bats! One bat can eat 1,200 mosquitoes in an hour. I'm in the process of adding a bat house in hopes of attracting them. There's a lot to know about bat houses. They only attract bats when properly sized, colored and located. Most bat houses sold commercially are useless. Web sites such as Bat Conservation Management have great information on attracting bats.

 

[Mmathis]

@poconojoe I don’t mean to sound rude, but...... While your posts here on this thread are very informative (I’m a big fan of bats!), they are not necessarily helpful to the OP in this situation. Just saying, it might be better (in this case) to stick to info that is immediately helpful for the OP! (And BTW, mosquito dunks are harmless — they are a natural bacteria — a larvicide. No chemicals. But this can be discussed on a different thread topic.)

 

[MitchM]

Thanks all for the additional info and sentiments. We so appreciate it. I’ll follow up more later...sorry for the quick post...have to head to work. All the fish looked pretty good last eve so I didn’t setup a QT yet, but this morning one is flashing so I’m planning on doing that this eve after work. Wish I could do it sooner.

PH this morning looks like something between 8.4 and 8.2. The color didn’t match up to anything but it’s closest to those two color blocks on the chart. Water temp was 64F. Ambient temp 57F.

Thanks.

If the other fish are showing signs of stress, then I would suggest moving them all to the hospital tank and focus on reducing the salinity. I think the current pond salinity level combined with the current state of health of the fish means that the salinity is the cause of stress.
So - 1) pond water into hospital tank, 2) fish into hospital tank, 3) water changes of about 15% per day in the hospital tank until the salinity is reduced to zero. After that, no more water changes.
Heating is not required.
In the meantime, do enough water changes in the pond until you have reduced that salinity to zero as well.
You'll need to set up a mature filter system to filter the hospital tank during this time.

 

[poconojoe]

@poconojoe I don’t mean to sound rude, but...... While your posts here on this thread are very informative (I’m a big fan of bats!), they are not necessarily helpful to the OP in this situation. Just saying, it might be better (in this case) to stick to info that is immediately helpful for the OP! (And BTW, mosquito dunks are harmless — they are a natural bacteria — a larvicide. No chemicals. But this can be discussed on a different thread topic.)

I only mentioned bats because the OP mentioned they were present in the area. And the OP was trying to repel mosquitoes by adding the dunks.
Plus, there are a lot of pond "additives" that claim to be safe for fish that some have found to be otherwise. Granted, maybe they didn't follow the instructions carefully, but I would not use dunks. No disrespect, but I just wouldn't chance it. That's just the way I feel....

 

[Lisak1]

You'll need to set up a mature filter system to filter the hospital tank during this time.

I don't know if you caught the earlier posts @MitchM - this pond has no filter at all. Getting a mature filter system set up for a hospital tank may be a challenge.

 

[MitchM]

I don't know if you caught the earlier posts @MitchM - this pond has no filter at all. Getting a mature filter system set up for a hospital tank may be a challenge.

I did, but there are ways around that.
Using some submerged rocks from the pond with periphyton, for example.
The general idea is that the fish will be in the hospital tank for a while until the main pond is ready for the fish to be reintroduced.

 

[Lisak1]

I did, but there are ways around that.
Using some submerged rocks from the pond with periphyton, for example.
The general idea is that the fish will be in the hospital tank for a while until the main pond is ready for the fish to be reintroduced.

Excellent! Thanks. I'm sure that will be helpful.

 

[sweetbeats]

I don’t know what periphyton is...I don’t know what defines a “mature filter system”...I’m getting dizzy with the multiplicity of issues to tackle...

So now the problem with my koi, the cause of the mixture of symptoms (pine-coning, rot, flashing, lethargy, no eating) is thought to be the salinity of the water? The symptoms were present prior to adding salt to the water. The QT advice started out to be a 0.8% salt bath, now it’s a de-salination QT? How did we go from dropsy to salt being the cause? I’m not trying to argue, I’m just getting dizzy.

Mosquito dunks...are they okay or not? We had so many larvae in the pond...either the koi did not like them or they could not keep on top of them, but in order to not have my slimmer basket look like it was moving (i.e. to control the mosquito larvae count) I think I put, over the course of a couple months, upwards of 6 dozen dunks in the pond. It’s been many weeks now since I put any in because the mosquito activity has mellowed...maybe in part due to the dunks. But now of course I’m questioning whether that was a bad idea to use them.

Biological filtration: I was thinking, because the head of my two waterfalls is in a small pool up above the pond, is it conceivable I could, with some channeling and/or damming up at the head, create a built in waterfall box out the existing rock structures that are there and place biological filter media in (a) mesh bag(s) up in what is already sort of in the form of a waterfall box anyway?

 

[MitchM]

This is why accurate water test results are so important.

You initially stated a PH of 9+, addition of vinegar, mosquito dunks, algecides, fish added without quarantine, which will all contribute to poor water quality.

On Tuesday you said you had never added salt, so I suggested treating the fish as if it was suffering in a zero salt environment.
Yesterday you posted test results that showed a relatively high salt concentration. Somebody added salt sometime, and we can only go on what we are told.
That also changes the treatment recommendations. Freshwater fish kept in a high salt concentration for too long will suffer damage to their kidneys which will lead to dropsy.

I don't understand how a supposedly reputable koi dealer could have led you so far off track. They should have sent you home with some treatment procedures plus a method of tracking the progress.

.

 

[Lisak1]

I don't understand how a supposedly reputable koi dealer could have led you so far off track. They should have sent you home with some treatment procedures plus a method of tracking the progress.

And they should have started by asking "what kind of filtration is on this pond".

I can imagine how frustrating this all is @sweetbeats - and all while your fish are dying. Just keep reminding yourself you're doing the best you can with a challenging problem.

@MitchM knows water chemistry - I would stick with his advice. Don't concern yourself about what you might have done in the past. Mosquito dunks are fine - like @Mmathis said they are fish safe.

The biofilm that grows on the submerged surfaces of the pond - that's periphyton. It's part of the filtration system that we don't often think about. Nature provides!

 

[MitchM]

Right, and it doesn't really matter how things got to this situation.
The more accurate the information we have, the more accurate and effective our advice will be.
We all want to help get your pond back on track.

 

[sweetbeats]

This is why accurate water test results are so important.

You initially stated a PH of 9+, addition of vinegar, mosquito dunks, algecides, fish added without quarantine, which will all contribute to poor water quality.

On Tuesday you said you had never added salt, so I suggested treating the fish as if it was suffering in a zero salt environment.
Yesterday you posted test results that showed a relatively high salt concentration. Somebody added salt sometime, and we can only go on what we are told.
That also changes the treatment recommendations. Freshwater fish kept in a high salt concentration for too long will suffer damage to their kidneys which will lead to dropsy.

I don't understand how a supposedly reputable koi dealer could have led you so far off track. They should have sent you home with some treatment procedures plus a method of tracking the progress.

.

I stated in my second post, Post #13, that I added 23lbs of salt at the advice of the local koi store. I’ve never added any salt prior to that, but I thought I made it clear salt was added to this pond. I also realize there’s a lot of information going back and forth and you certainly have many other things to do besides track the minutia of my saga, but I at least better understand the “why” of what seems like contradictory advice.

So...are you saying you think the current symptoms are related to salinity, because there were symptoms prior to adding salt.

 

[MitchM]

My impression was that you got the salt from the dealer but held off putting it in.
My apologies if I missed something.
If the fish was sick before, without water tests, it's hard to say what happened. It could have been an illness that you had no control over.
What I do know is that the fish you still have will be stressed in the present salinity of water so lets go forward from there.

 

[Lisak1]

I missed that you added the salt, too. I saw that you said it was recommended but the "we've never added salt" threw me - I see now that you meant "we've never added salt before this".

I think one of the issues here is that there's been so much going on that it's hard to say anymore what started the whole thing. Did you at one point mention adding new fish recently? In any case, I'm with @MitchM - best to just try to save the fish you have left and get your pond in order.

How many fish are you left with at this point and how many are showing symptoms? Any as bad as the one you lost yesterday?