DO THEY REALLY DO THIS?

[Mmathis]

I just read this in a fish web article, and the paragraph heading was "Unexplained deaths."

"8. Not frequent in young fish, but if there is simply no hint of anything else it could be a heart attack or a stroke. This can be confirmed by autopsy."

I don't doubt that fish can suffer from such illnesses, but do they do autopsies (or necropsies) on fish to look for stroke & heart attack?

 

[fishin4cars]

Yes, On high end fish they do sometimes do this to determine cause of death. when your talking thousands of dollars on a single fish, one death and the owner will do what ever it takes not to lose anymore. I doubt heart attacks or strokes are common at all, but they might find that's the cause of death in a search for the true cause if nothing normal shows up.

 

[Mmathis]

Well, guess I can sorta see it, but still.... Obviously NOT something the average fish owner is going to pursue. Sorry. I don't mean to sound insensitive or disrespectful, but I never thought of it before. I pictured "Ducky" in autopsy saying, "Palmer, pass me that retractor, the teeny, tiny one." And "Jimmy" replying, something like, "Doctor, um, I can't find it -- are you sure you didn't leave it in the kitchen? You DID have fish for dinner last night."

 

[Dave 54]

Many of us in the koi world have a passion for koi and even if they are not worth the thousands that catewind has rightfully said.
Many of us who have a big interest in the health and welfare of our koi will actively do an autopsy on a koi to help identify the cause of death.
I did an autopsy on my friend Matt's cream Ogon to see what had caused it to loose all epright balance coasing it to go belly up and die.
It turned out that the koi had ruptured its swim bladder, it also had a large amount of fat cells laid down possibly due to the diet its previous owner gave it Koi and trout pellets dont mix .....
So you see things can be gleaned from an autopsy, as can examaning a koi that has died before opening up the window you need to autopsy with .
Havent you yourelf ever wondered why a fish has just dropped dead on you or died of another cause?
A stiff freshly dead koi will have died of a heart attack it has been found.
A koi found dead with swollen and red vent was found to have a internal bacterial infection.
So it pays to investingate for future avoidance of simmilar problems.
It's like in biology during school which is if you think about it the first time we ever did one, Many of us sadly with a creature euthenized by ourselves in the classroom under teachers watchful eye.
Further I've just remembered many of the more advanced koi health books even take you through autopsy's.
Many do them and just as many dont I suppose its down to each individual koi/fish keeper.
Remember there are lots of things going on in and around ponds some good other things not so good it can be a matter of life or death if the problem keeps repeating itself especially with internal infections.
Many koi keepers have extensive first aid kits and a microscope including an extremely sharp surgical kit to enable us to do them and veiw samples taken under the microsope used in happier times to identify Parasites infecting your koi/fish externally .
We are also able to take swabs that can be sent to a qualified Koi/fish Doctor for their diagnoses
I did see what was at the time the largest koi in the Southwest of the UK that had infact suffered a stroke whilst coning over from Japan "it recovered" thankfully due to its owners dilegence
rgrds

Dave

 

[RoyalFeather]

I have over $200 worth of fish in my pond currently and they all have names, so if one died and I couldn't explain it, I would definitely want to know why. I have performed necropsies on my chickens before, so a fish isn't a very far stretch.

If I were raising show Koi that were worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars, I'd be dissecting the dead ones, too.

 

[Dave 54]

As long as you cut your window so as not to damage any organs including the all important swim bladder so that all the organs are exposed and can be inspected. You can through careful obsevation gleen the problem other times it required a microscope or a swab to get to the bottom of a problem .
Be aware though to wear surgical gloves as there are a number of infections that can be a zoonoseses infection,in that it is a species skipper and can in one or two cases if caught can cause the death of a person, whilst others just leave infections that dont want to heal.
I remember a young 13 year old being infected with fish TB in the US, she had cut herself on the Aquarium they had run the story on the PFK website
Sadly there was talk of amputating her arm as it was that painful( makes you think ) how many of us do maintenance of filters etc and dont wear gloves eh ????

rgrds

Dave