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Post by shemmy on May 30, 2009 10:39:53 GMT
I visited my younger sister last night, who has a beautiful garden with a pond. While admiring her Koi Carp, the largest one, who must be about 3lbs, starting racing up to the top of the surface, it almost looked as if he was gasping for breath. Then he pirouetted about, and raced around in a frenzy doing almost acrobatics. He stopped and just went back to his casual swimming around. My sister, said that he had been doing this since the winter. When the pond was iced over, apparently, he had lain upside down with his belly against the ice, and they thought he was dead, but then he would recover. They had inquired at a fish centre, and they bought some herbal treatment, which she said helped the fish for awhile, and then he started this mad behaviour. He swims upright, normally, so they are perplexed as to what is the matter with him. Any ideas?
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Post by BjornTobyStomped on May 30, 2009 21:09:38 GMT
I visited my younger sister last night, who has a beautiful garden with a pond. While admiring her Koi Carp, the largest one, who must be about 3lbs, starting racing up to the top of the surface, it almost looked as if he was gasping for breath. Then he pirouetted about, and raced around in a frenzy doing almost acrobatics. He stopped and just went back to his casual swimming around. My sister, said that he had been doing this since the winter. When the pond was iced over, apparently, he had lain upside down with his belly against the ice, and they thought he was dead, but then he would recover. They had inquired at a fish centre, and they bought some herbal treatment, which she said helped the fish for awhile, and then he started this mad behaviour. He swims upright, normally, so they are perplexed as to what is the matter with him. Any ideas? If he's flicking or scraping against surfaces it could be a parasite problem. Does he stay relatively still long enough to be able to spot any signs of white spot or ulcers?
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Post by shemmy on May 31, 2009 6:34:36 GMT
Hi Toby, he doesn't appear to have any sort of spots on him, but he only turned upside down against the ice. The rest of the time, he swims about normally, and then suddenly goes berserk, doing his piroutting and it almost looks as though he sticks his head out of the water, because he is gasping for breath. He then charges all around the pond, and then settles down.
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Post by Glen B Ogle on Jun 3, 2009 20:01:32 GMT
It sounds like a lack of oxygen in the water. There's a couple of possible causes. One is that any oxygenating plants died over the winter due the ice. It's also possible that rotting plant matter is producing other gasses. We had much the same problem when our pond was fairly new (i.e. plants not established) and mother overstocked it with new fish - none of them survived. My first thought would be to fit an oxygenator if there isn't one already. We fitted a solar powered one as the pond is some way from power (although we've now put electrics in for a waterfall pump). www.primrose-london.co.uk/solar-oxygenator-stone-p-728.html?source=googlebaseShows one that's similar to ours. Glen
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