Hi everyone, I had been posting to my original thread titled "Emergency Fish Dying 2 each day!" but I wanted to start over fresh since I'm still losing fish and I've made some new observations.
My parameters have been and remain normal pretty much from from the start of this two weeks ago.
Water parameters really do not seem to be the reason the fish are dying 3-6 per day.
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Phosphate: 0
Nitrate: .5
KH: 4 drops (I know this needs to be higher)
PH 7.2 at night and 7.8 in the day.
So far, ONLY my goldfish are dying. I only have a few Koi and they so far are ok.
They seem to be getting sick and dying in groups of 5-6 fish. They seem healthly then a day or so later a new group is sick. this would be parasites right???? But which one! ZERO visiable signs of anything, except for one or two fish appeared to have some tiny ich on their faces????? The gills are not visibly damaged. If it was ich killing them, wouldn't I see more evidence of white spots??? They start to act listless, hang by themselves at the waterfall and sometimes not, not eating. Then dead in about two days. There is minimal jumping at the surface. I've seen my giant koi jump a few times though.
I have done two treatments of Praziquantel and it seemed to slow the deaths, but they continue. Maybe I'm not putting enough? I've put two 50mg containers about 7 days apart, and I have another jar on the way this week.
I'm thinking of using Malachite Green next. Is there any issues with combining the Praziquantel and the Malachite Green? Do I need to do a water change before I add the Malachite Green. Keep in mind, this is a 10,000 gallon pond, so water changes of more than 10% are going to be pretty costly. I'm already paying $300 a quarter just to compensate for the leak/dry summer.
At this point, I'm thinking it must be something other than flukes.
The birdbath in the picture now shoots water about 15" high and provides additional aeration to the pond. Birds don't go on it because its shooting a lot of water everywhere and they are scared.
Any other ideas? I'm running out of options, and fish. This is such horrible torture. I so long for peace in my life again.