b***dy costia again! 2

[dave22]

Hi.

Didn't want to hijack amandas post, so started my own. Seems we're in the same boat.

I have exactly the same problems. Fish not right since spring. Found and treated flukes. Fish still not right. Scraped and scraped and found nothing. Then....costia, so pp'd the pond. Still not much change. One fish clamped on the bottom. A few flashing. Some build up of mucus on a few. Rescraped - bl**dy hell - loads of costia. Rightly or wrongly pp'd again yesterday (wed). Today, still not a lot of improvement. A few still flashing and the one still clamped. Starting to despair now. Maybe they need to calm down a bit after the pp? I'll rescrape tomorrow (fri). Half suspecting the costia still there. Don't know what I'll do then. Was thinking FMG but don't know the exact gallonage. I'M STUCK!

Any advice would be fantastic. Thanks.

[Manky Sanke]

Dave,

20 - 20 hindsight vision says that if you have an irregular shaped pond you should have filled it through a water meter so that you know the volume of the pond with the filter isolated and also the volume of the pond plus the filters so that you know how much water you have when you add a treatment either with or without the filters. That's too late for you but anyone looking in who might build an irregular shaped pond in the future should bear that in mind.

In your situation you can measure the volume by adding a known amount of a harmless chemical and accurately measuring the resultant concentration in the water. The rest is just arithmetic.

There are pond volume measuring kits on the market that do just that. I've just Googled one and, for nineteen quid delivered, it claims an accuracy of plus or minus 3%. Or better still, you could have a read of this article by Duncan and see if it helps:
http://www.koiquest.co.uk/Volume.pdf

[Daran]

Dave how did you manage to PP the pond if you dont know the gallaonage ?

Two doses of M&F run through the system a week apart would be my favourite option now but like you say you really do need to know the amount of water your dealing with

[dave22]

I pp'd the fish in a paddling pool with known gallonage, and nuked the pond separately

[Koi Man Dave]

Dave

When hitting the pond did you top up above the normal water line as eggs can be lurking within these areas

[amanda]

costia divides itself so no eggs will be present for them though gill fluke do eggs.
Costia can also encyst itself so can some times survive on dry nets etc so these should be cleaned as well.
mgf is the best treatment for me any way,but i learned my lesson with the pre mixed stuff as it has no strentgh and i had it back within a month.
Have you tried salt bathing the worst affected to give them some relief while you try and sort something out?

[dave22]

Thanks amanda. Well, I took positive action today. One on my kohaku was back on his side this morning - all morning - not good. So I managed to get a water meter, emptied the pond into paddling pool and transferred fish. Drained pond and gave a thourough cleaning. Metered paddling pool water back into pond and topped up with dechlorinated metered tap water. Did quite well really as temp only dropped 1/2 degree. Fish back in pond - dosed with fmg, and all seems ok at the minute. The one on his side is swimming round, and they all want food - but they wont get much because I guess (especially after the pp last week) that my filters will be stone dead. And yes, Itopped up well past the normal water line and swooshed the water into even more harder to reach places. I'll just have to see what happens now.

Thanks.

Dave

[Kanundra]

Costia, is awful. I hope you managed to nuke it.

D