Need some diagnostic minds here...

[James5]

Hello! For those of you I haven't met my names is James and I'm a resident of northern Illinois.

Last summer I built a 4,000 gallon pond in my backyard with a great deal of help from folks here. Everything has gone fairly well but I've run into some problems with my fishies.

First, a little back story. My whole venture started two years ago when I was given a 10 gallon aquarium for my birthday from my wife. I decided to stock it with a few koi because, well, they're beautiful Japanese fish and at the time I was engrossed to two master's courses on Japanese history. Needless to say I found out real quick that there were going to be size issues. Before long I upgraded to a 55 gallon tank and then a 150 gallon tank. Little bugers grow like weeds! When we bought our first house two years ago I went to work building a pond and finished last year just before winter came. I put two koi in for the winter to see how they did and they survived the frigid winter here just fine. With springtime I added plants and the rest of my koi. A total of nine were in the pond by the tailend of spring after we bought four more to go straight into the pond.

They all did wonderful. I have some green cloudiness issues mostly because my pond receives direct sunlight from dawn until late afternoon. But I've read many places that that's not bad for the fish, it's just unsightly.

The fish range in size from 8-14 inches.

About a month ago I found one of the biggest ones dead on the bottom. I fished him out and it appeared as though he had a large internal hemorrhage spot on his underbelly. Mind you, I've spent over a decade working in trauma medicine so that's what it looked like to me.

Just an hour ago I opened up my skimmer box to clear any debris out and inside I found another of big ones on her side gulping for air at the surface. I gently lifted her out and she quickly squirmed out of my hand and into the pound. I feed the fish then to see if I could get her to come back to the surface. The rest of the fish did but not her. After a few minutes I spotted her lazily swimming the perimeter of the pond. I gently removed her from the pond and looked her over. It appears as though she has marking from internal trauma all along her flanks and under belly with some scales around her sides and tail hanging loose.

I have since placed her back into the 150 gallon tank in my living room to keep an eye on her.

Any suggestions? Is this some form of trauma as I suspect or is it possible something else is going on?

 

[Waterbug]

Given what you wrote may first guess would be damage from spawning. But it's these types of things are difficult to diagnose in person and really impossible remotely. Could also be a bacteria infection because that can look like internal damage.

If you don't have a lot of plants and you think it could be from spawning it's pretty easy to add some spawning mops. Seeing actual spawning is not super common, but the pre-spawning behavior lasts much longer so is easier to spot but is also much harder to notice. Fish often swim in schools, but in pre-spawn if you track fish you'll notice the same fish always following the same lead fish. And the position of the followers is mostly behind and below the lead fish. The longer you have fish the easier it is to spot.

Beyond that my standard suggestion is to just keep water quality as good as you can. The fish themselves are your best tool for fighting disease. Healthier fish stay healthier. Given you didn't post any water testing numbers I'd suggest starting there, not as a one time OMG thing, but as a long term getting to know your pond over time so you know what the numbers mean. I assume you can learn a lot about a trauma patient with a simple blood pressure test. Kind of the same deal only you're testing the environment.

 

[Dave 54]

What are your water perameters , Ammonia , Nitrite, nitrate, Ph, Kh ?
How often do you test for these please?
Also what is your maintenance routine i;e waterchanges, how much , how often?
What size filter do you have on the pond, when do you do mmaintenance on that ?
We UK koi keeper dont have plants in our pond as we go in for the formal pond it also gives us a clue as to what is happening toour koi in that we learn to read them thus giving you an important tool in the fight against disease, Parasites, Bacterial problems and viral ones ?
For a water change we change about 30-40% of our water, our filter is a four chambered affair , we clean out the vortex at the same time as the waterchange, we clean the next two filters at the begining of the season the middle of the season and at the end of the season so as you can see there is constant maintenance going on the last filter is our bio filter.
Koi do not look after themselves and are messy fish the larger the koi the more ammonia is passed via the gills 75% of the ammonia excreted by a koi is via the koi's gills.
Healthy gills are bright red did you happen to look at your koi's gills and if so can you say what colour they were?
Tell me did you have an air pump running through the summer months if not in future I strongly recomend you do. The higher the temperature of the pond the lower the oxygen saturation level in total we run two airpumps one that the sole purpose of is to supply oxygen to the pond.
The other has a twelve gang manifold supplying three air stones in filters 2 and 3 the last the bio filter has six airstones in it, these run 24/7 365 days of a year and are never switched off .
so as you can see there is alott going on in the pond plus its maintenance and water changes.

rgrds

Dave

 

[sissy]

I just read in our local paper about those big high power towers and the spray weed killing they have been doing around here from helicopters and how it has not only effected crops and farm animals besides pets .It has also effected peoples lungs .I know I have had a cough for months and doctor could not figure out what it is and now wondering if this could be caused by this also .I saw them spraying from my house as the power towers are about 2 miles or more from my house .I think this is the first year i have seen them doing it .They did it in late spring and there are several big farm ponds not far from the spraying and the fish that died and what looked like injuries on there bodies .They also spray the towers with something and not sure if it was some type of rust proofing or what .I know all the weeds and trees down the whole strip are dead .Could the same have happened where you are at .I found out they do it every 10 years and I have been here 9 years .