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  • Results 1 to 6 of 6

    Thread: Koi attacked; Medicating in the winter

    1. #1
      Bigfishlittlefish is offline Junior Member
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      Unhappy Koi attacked; Medicating in the winter

      Sadly shortly after I stopped feeding my fish for the winter we had a predator attack (probably heron but not know). Many of my big Goldies were taken but the little goldfish(20), big koi (4) and baby koi (9) remain. The pond is 3500 gallons. However the survivors sustained injury probably from bashing themselves around. The big koi fins were damaged, especially on our one big butterfly koi. Everything looked horrible and inflammed when I first discovered it. I tried to clean the pond intensively (and it was already pretty clean, I had just done the winter close down), did several big water changes and added salt. Most of the redness died down but things still don't look great. I can see signs of bacterial infection on some of the wounds and fish that looked unaffected at first now show signs of minor fin damage and white patches (not big and cottony, just mildly white).

      The water is sitting around 42-45f. Would it be safe to treat them with melafix or any other drug? I don't expect it to get any colder but can't count on it being above 50f until mid April. Although whatever is attacking my stressed fish is progressing slowly I'm worried about them enduring a bacterial problem for this long. Water testing hasn't revealed anything abnormal.

      What should I do? Medicate? Just keep salting? How much should I be changing their water? We just turned off the external bio filter
      Last edited by Bigfishlittlefish; 12-18-2017 at 02:24 PM.

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    2. #2
      cindy's Avatar
      cindy is offline Administrator
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      They won't heal in cold water. Can you set up something inside? 80 would be perfect.

    3. #3
      Bigfishlittlefish is offline Junior Member
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      Quote Originally Posted by cindy View Post
      They won't heal in cold water. Can you set up something inside? 80 would be perfect.
      I certainly don't have anything that could house them all inside right now, the biggest koi are over probably range from 20-35"

    4. #4
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      Do you have the pond covered. A lean-to type of structure covered with polyethylene sheeting will keep the pond warmer, and even allow you to heat the pond. Melafix is questionable as a treatment, making the water smell, but no real evidence that it does any healing. It is tea tree oil, and works ???? on non aquatic animals, but in water the oil can't do much for the fish except coat the gills, which is not recommended. The best treatment would be temperature. The white that you are seeing could be fungus, which is a secondary invader, attacking wounds that would otherwise be healing. The preferred treatment for fungus would be Proform C, but it is not recommended at temperatures below 50 degrees and that may or may not help the wounds heal, just kill the fungus.
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    5. #5
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      Cindy and Richard are right. Your best bet is a 10 foot Intex pool set up in a garage or basement, which you could insulate and heat. Nobody starts out with all the quarantine equipment they need, but if your fish are to heal, their water really does need to be warmer. The good people here can walk you through how to set it up and filter it.

      White areas can be healing skin, it skims over with a thin white layer before it thickens up and looks healed. You want to watch for reddened areas or patches of cottony growth, or greenish looking bits.
      Mary

    6. #6
      ademink's Avatar
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      It can feel overwhelming to try to bring them inside but trust me...it's doable. First determine if you can fit something into a warm location. As mentioned above...an intex pool. I didn't have room for one so went with a 300g Rubbermaid stock tank. I then "jenga'd" it to fit another 300g and they are daisy chained together. If you take it a step at a time, you can do it.
      Andrea
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