White stuff, lethargy,and "playing dead"

[VABeachPondGuy]

I'm holding 20 large to medium koi before transferring them to another pond. They seemed healthy when I picked them up and they're in a larger pond than they came from. They ate well when they first arived, but I'm atributing some appetite loss to the dip in temps. I've had them three weeks now.

The largest fish has taken to playing dead...laying on his side on the bottom of the pond, then swimming normally when I try to net it for inspection. Others are getting milky eyes, and the worst case is a large butterfly koi with white spots, milky eyes, etc. See attached pics.

 

[fishin4cars]

That's a very disturbing set of photo's, It appears to be parasite but also bacterial and fungal secondary infections are present as well. Can you locate a vet that can do a scope? It very important you start treating with the correct medication and dosage the first time you treat. What is you ammonia levels, nitrites, and nitrates? PH and hardness would be helpful to know as well but at this point should not be adjusted. Have you added salt? If not I would dose the tank up with a salt solution of .03% or 2.5 lbs of non Iodized salt (Ice cream salt is cheap and works great) per 100 gallons of water. Increase air flow to the highest you can can, then find a way to add more, Seriously you want plenty of oxygen getting to them, Try and locate tetracycline, or .Furanace and Dimilin. This will be the most common medications to use to attack Other parasites that the salt won't kill off and have the bacterial medication to help fight off the secondary bacteria infections, The salt should help slow or stop Fungus infections and should help buy you some time to get professional help. that many fish need to seperated and the worse ones treated with very aggressive medications, the lesser effected ones may recover with a simple salt bath and better water quality. Again, I highly advise contacting a Vet, a Koi dealer, Koi club, or someome that can scope the fish and find out exactly what is attacking and go after that first.

 

[VABeachPondGuy]

PH was 7.5, ammonia was low but could be improved. I did a partial water change and added salt. I need to pick up nitrite & nitrate kits. I have a waterfall for air flow but like the ammonia levels that too can be improved. I'm sure my pond is over stocked for the filtration I've built in so I'll be adding more biofiltration to the mix tomorrow. That fish was the worst case with a few others developing what I'm pretty sure is a white fungus. I'm thinking the fish pictured has ich as well as a fungal infection. That fish along with any others with signs of ich will be removed in the morning and medicated for it. I'll se if I can track down the meds you recommended.

Thanks for the help. I'll keep you posted.

 

[VABeachPondGuy]

Oh, and I'll call the vet in the morning...

 

[fishin4cars]

I'm afraid your looking at aomething a lot more serious than ICH, If I had to make a guess, and I must stress a experienced guess at BEST, I would first guess Costia ot Epistylis. Again all three need VERY different medications to treat, However, .03% salt will stop Epistylis, it will greatly reduce the spread of Ich and if you increase heat to 70 Ich will even improve more.Methylene Blue or malachite Green will help kill those but will also greatly disrupt ayou bio-filtration and if you run any charcoal in your system it should be removed if you use either of those medications if you want the medication to be effective. However if it's Costia you will need to take other measures and need to take them agressively as it will spread from fish to fish very rapidily exspecially if the water is not in optimim condition. The ONLY true way to make sure what you are dealing with is under a microscope. You can start taking measures that will help, but to truly treat exactly what your dealing with you first really need to know what you treating against so the proper medication can be recommended.

 

[VABeachPondGuy]

Given the flashing and other behaviors, I think your first guess, Costia is correct. This sucks, lol. I'm on the hunt for a microscope.

 

[VABeachPondGuy]

OK, I did a partial water change, added salt, added 3 35 gallon trash can biofilters to the mix. I cranked up the airation and water circulation. I did a shotgun treatment to the whole pond for various fungal, bacterial, and parisitic ailments, including costia (all the fish old and new began showing signs of distress in various forms so the shotgun treatment at that point made more sense to me). I gave all the fish I could easily net a concentrated salt water bath.

The pictured fish was too far gone and passed the next day but the others that where on death's door are bouncing back slowly. I'm a little more optomistic about the situation now. Thanks for all the advice.