Simply Koi and More Koi

Over the last couple of weeks my koi have been "off". The first scrape revealed an easy diagnosis - Trichodina!

I immediately cleaned the settlement (done each week) and then topped up with fresh water - stopped feeding and then dosed the pond with a 2ppm treatment of PP. This held the water Pink for approx 2-3hrs.

Several days later the koi still looked "off" - a re-scrape revealed the critters were still there so a complete repeat of treatment protocol again.


Here we are a full 8 days after the 2nd treatment and the critters are still present - so today i have had a complete pull apart of my filters:-

Main Filters.

Settlement Chamber – vacum’d out but no more muck than usual for a week worth of waste.

Bakki spraybar removed and cleaned (although only a bit of crud in the holes)

Bakki trays dismantled and media removed – NOTHING

Bakki Pumping Chamber – vacum’d out bit of muck but not much

Japanese Matting (4 sheets) removed – NOTHING

Skimmer.

Skimmer chamber – vacum’d out bit in here but not much

Skimmer Japanese Matting – NOTHING


However i was playing dodge the rain showers today and at one point it was really heavy. I then noticed that the flat roof guttering was overflowing into the settlement chamber, climbing up i then found that it was full of muck and blocked and the water was not flowing cleanly away from the guttering and was all in fact going into the pond.

Could this be the issue??

Can trichodina thrive / survive in this kind of environment and keep flowing into the pond.

Got a treatment regime you would recommend or am i there (as i think i am as high as i dare with the PP at 2ppm)? - - - – but have had suggested use Chloramine T the pond in the morning and then PP later on in the afternoon. This will apparently remove the mucus from the koi and allow the PP to work more effectively – thoughts?

Hi Greg,

I normally like to use a ORP meter when treating so i can see where the PP is just in case it gets spent on any other organic matter apart from the critters. If the pond was only pinky for 2-3 hrs then i would have added another batch to bring I back to being pink as it should be like this for at least 4 hours.

Now that its all nice and clean may be an idea to go for it again you could hit it with course of MG&F

Greg,

I don't have anything to add to Gazza's regime but to answer your question about tricodina getting into your pond from an overflowing gutter, this is only an opinion but I don't think it could be wrong.

Tricodina multiply by binary fission, which means mum splits in two to leave mum plus a daughter. Then they split again, and so on. Eggs are not involved.

Therefore to have some kind of breeding colony on the roof or in the gutter, you would need a permanent aquatic environment up there. I can't imagine tricodina surviving in a gutter that dried out and got hot when the rain stopped, so I don't think the overflowing gutter is the source. Who knows differently?

Greg

You have an odd scenario - trich returning repeatedly.

You have an "odd" configuration - gutter water being returned to the pond, through lots of muck.

Co-incidences are rare.

Easy way to test your theory:

1/ Clean the gutter (done) and ensure it can't reroute to pond
2/ Treat again at the same dose as before

If trich goes then most likely that 1 was the source.

That said I don't exactly understand / comprehend how the gutter could "house" trich given it needs a live host as far as I'm aware.

Tom

Cheers All,

I am on a reducing organic load in the pond drive with higher % water changes after the deep clean. I have fixed the guttering and will see if this changes anything as i will be hitting this in the AM.

I have had suggested a PP dip for each koi prior to returning to the pond followed by a full pond treatment.

To be fair i am not 100% sure i got rid of it - just that i cannot seem to shake it / it may be returning.

Either way historically i have been used to the 1 dose treatment of PP takes care of Trichodina - this time it hasn't so i'm left with what's changed.

i). More koi = higher organic load
ii). More food so higher waste (see above)
iii). Different filtration set up - (although my honest thoughts are that the current set up is better being more open)

A real frustration as i really dislike putting chemicals in the pond and this will be the third PP in as many weeks.

Greg

Not sure with trich, but there are often different variants of each parasite. Some are knocked out easily, some are stubborn. Trich should be easy as there is no "protected egg" cycle involved - hence the single treatment.

Anyway, at least the PP will be giving the koi's skin a "facial scrub".

I was going to ask what your TDS was v your input TDS, as that's often an easy spot if organic load is a problem. But then I then decided it was too nerdy to ask

Tom

Tom,

Nerdily - pond TDS is currently 240-250ppm and as you know i'm inputting an RO / water mix - this is typically about 100-110ppm. So the answer to your question is yes that its a problem at least in my opinion.

Basically my little RO unit is not coping with the stocking level and the feed rates i have been using. Lots of new shiney gadgets on order to build a bigger unit and put into place PH controllers etc. Hopefully this will fix the issue and get me back to where i like to be in full summer feeding etc - around 150ppm.

Hm... so how much input water are you generating per day? and what ratio is your mix?

Your pond is 3k, yes?

Tom

Tom,

Yes 3000 gallons.

Input was on last check point - 275ml per min @ 101TDS with it typically being i guess 25% mix and 75% RO (although not measured % of each just used a TDS meter to balance the TDS reading i wanted)

Mix ratio is as of yesterday is out the window as i just opened up the "mix" line to full throttle to change more water. I will rescue the RO / readings situation when the new 1200gpd unit arrives next week and i suspect it will not take me long to get down to sensible levels.

I would have thought that would have been good enough to keep the system running to be honest. Hence, my inclination that your TDS is being driven higher by more than just feed>waste cycle.

I'm running 0.4 lpm RO and 0.1 lpm tap giving a TDS of about 70. Pond itself is running at 120 TDS. And, as you know, 7.5k gallons.

So not disimilar when you downscale, and my feeding rates aren't "light".

Anyway, you'll have plenty of choices with your new RO unit.

Tom