Hi fish people

[Rach B]

Hi im hoping someone can help me, ive had a pond since forever but last year ran into huge propblems.

i have a 850 gallon formal concrete pond with koi, grass carp, orfe goldfish etc. I bought about 10 small goldfish and shubumkins last spring from my local fish place.

one by one they all devoloped nasty ulcers and died. I lost a few of my original fish too. My water tested fine and i treated the water several times for ulcer diseases but to no avail!

So anyway autumn came water cooled and the problem went away i have about 10 fish left.

So heres my dilema, i want more fish but do i risk putting new ones in??? Do you think my problem will come back could it be a pond prob or fish one.

thanks in advance

 

[tbendl]

I don't have fish but can guess that with your size pond and having koi you're pond is too small. I'll wait for the o"fish"al peeps to chime in though.

 

[bettasngoldfish]

Hi Rach, Welcome to the group!

I'm wondering if you quarantined the new fish before adding them to your pond? If not you may have introduced parasites or some other disease which slowly killed the new fish as well as the old ones.

Are the current fish health? Do you have a test kit to check your water parameters?

 

[Rach B]

Hi, no i didnt quarantine, never have before. All my fish are just starting to feed as the weather is warming up and they all look healthy.

When i was having my problems last year, i took samples to my local fish shop several times and they said the water quality was near perfect, its a quite well established pond.

thanks for your reply

 

[Meyer Jordan]

You don't state what level of filtration, mechanical and bio, is provided. What is the flow rate (pump size)?

 

[Mmathis]

Welcome!

 

[Tula]

Your pond in your avatar is beautiful and welcome to our site! I never quarantined my fish either, as I always bought them from our local fish hatchery and they said they treat them prior to selling them. After educating myself on this forum, I'm now terrified to add new fish to my pond without quarantining them.

My pond is about 1700 gallons and I have four large koi.

 

[j.w]

Rach B

 

[Big Lou]

Welcome

 

[mtpond]

Welcome.

 

[Rach B]

Hi everyone, thanks for the welcome. I have a med fish mate filter and I bought a new pump last year. I don't know what flow rate it is you're getting to technical for me now lol, but I did ask at my fish supplier and they advised me for the size of my pond.

The pond has been established for about 10 years and ive never had a problem before

I have lots of frogs too, could this be the problem?
Thanks again for the welcome x

 

[CountryEscape]

I don't think the frogs are any issue to your problem. My guess is your new fish brought the problem with them last summer, and the cooler weather put the issue in hibernation. I would be VERY careful adding any new fish to the pond this spring. Wait until the water warms up, and just see if any problem still exist. How deep is your pond? It appears to be more than 800 gals in your avatar, that's why I ask. What are the dimensions? With the number of fish, I immediately thought too many fish, but your pond appears to be more like 1500 gals. Sounds like your pond is handling the fish load very well, maybe just was too much to handle with the added fish last summer, possibly also the time of year you added them. Good luck ... oh, and WELCOME!

 

[Rach B]

Thanks again for your reply, im sure the pond is only about 850 - 900 gallons, 24" deep, again the fish shop helped with that. They seemed to help with everything including infecting my b****dy pond lol!

In the past ive had about 40 odd fish of varying sizes in there with no probs at all, it all kicked off last year after the new ones. Im sure it could handle about 5 new additions of just small comets or shumbumkins but you're right I will wait until about June time and see if any problems occur. I have a beautiful big koi and would be mad if that died, will just have to wait and see

But if you all are like me you're just itching to get outside and enjoy the nice weather and feed the fish.

BTW if I can find a way to quarantine new fish how long should I do it for and do I need to treat the water?

Im a pain now aren't I???

 

[CountryEscape]

They say quarantine for 30 days. If you had an inside aquarium, for the size of fish you are talking about adding, that would be perfect. Your big koi is less likely to succumb to disease, but the smaller fish are more likely to pick it up. The larger the fish, the longer it takes for disease (usually anyhow) to take it down.
That being said, I added 3 fantails last night, that were not quarantined. Nope, I guess I will never learn. I did have a HUGE fish kill one summer, but it all happened within a few days. No diseases that I could notice on the fish, thinking (pretty sure, in fact) that it was aerial spraying of the fields surrounding my yard that caused the kill. Koi were all fine, but the goldfish pond suffered a big loss. I was overstocked, and in that case, it was the larger fish that died, not the smaller ones. So, guess I just contradicted myself, didn't I .... ;-)

 

[addy1]

Welcome to our group!

Im a pain now aren't I???

nope better to ask and learn than lose everything