[AquaticLife] Help..koi keep dying
Hi Manda,
I had a similar problem last year in a larger pond that had been established for 14 years. The mid size gold fish I had kept on being found dead. I tried a lot of chemicals and remedial action but it took a lot to get the whole thing under control. We actually took the pond down over a weekend all 10′X17′X48″ deep worth and scrubbed the liner clean and removed all the insides. When you say Ammonia is all you have wrong, that is the most important element to keep out of the water. I bought a lot of chemicals and then a fancy $250 meter to measure the Ammonia. Still we lost about 70 fish. Apparently when we counted them coming out into a temp pond I put together while cleaning there were about 250 fish in this pond- I know it was over populated and even now I am trying to give away fish to good pond owners but I have found no takers. These are just feeders that have developed into larger fish that are just as colorful as the Koi but less sensitive to bad water. Koi are the most sensitive to bad water so unless you are really on top of the chemistry you are headed for disappointment. I would call in a Koi expert from a fish shop or consult a Marine Biologist with Koi as a specialty. I think in our cleaning, we did finally find one small decaying fish under a filter that was in the water that may have tipped the entire scale to cause this disaster. One idea you can use is to take some of the fish to a different tank or established pond that will allow them to be removed from the stress while you deal with the problem at hand. I went crazy contacting all kinds of people in the Pond business in the Chicago area and you know what I found? There are no experts to help you in great times of need like this- it is all up to you. I even called the Game and Wildlife division of the government and they got back to me but this is out of their experience but at least they called me back. The guy who builds ponds in my town told me he would just take the whole thing down and clean it. I asked him what size ponds he does and he said all the way up to $250,000 size ponds. The water can be tested at a fish shop as well but the ammonia needs to be very very low and then from past exposure you still may lose a couple yet. Ammonia has to be near 0 ppm or as close to .25ppm or lower. If above this, Ammo chips can be added to the filter path and 20% partial water changes with anticloramine added as needed. This may take a week or two to get back to acceptable levels. Don’t kill algae with chemicals! Especially with koi in the water, they will not like it or live through the process. The UV device if at 9watts or better and the right flow rate should do the trick. 1 tetra 9W unit clears my pond in about a week- only the free floating algae not the stuff on the liner or rocks.
I hope this helps.
Best regards,
Sam Palermo, Chief Engineer Skywave Broadcast Engineering, Chicago (708)334-2260 Past Teac/Tascam Service Technician still doing repairs.
mandacaplan wrote: > > I am new to this koi hobby and I am having trouble and I am wondering > if anyone can help me…I have had fish tanks my whole life and never > had problems like this. Anyhow we converted a hot tub into a koi pond > so it is a little less then 500 gallons. It has live plants, a filter > with UV light made for up to 1000 gallon ponds, a pump, a spitter, and > a fountain jet to produce more O2. Everything bad started happening > after I treated the pond with algae fix….I lost 5 fish even though I > know I did not overdose…maybe lack of O2 since at that time I only > had the filter spitter and not the waterfall. I did a partial water > change and cleaned out the filter. The algea just keep growing and the > water kept getting darker so I bought a new product that is supposed to > help a lot called Green Clean. I applied that as directed and next day > I lost 2 more fish. I have checked water quality and the only thing > that was a problem was high ammonia(I think due to a lot of recent > spanwning) so I used Ammo-lock…..the other thing was the PH was > somewhat low so I also added a PH increaser. I have now added the next > step that they say to use which is Microbe lift/PL. I need > help…anyone have any advice. I hate to lose these beautiful fish all > of the time. > >
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
