Help With Kio

[weston adam]

Hi guys never visited this site before as all my fish are tropical, just had a frantic call from my dad he has a beutiful kio pond it's been set up for about four years now, anyway today he has three of his fish on there sides at the top of the pond with what looks like there scales starting to lift he said they have silver patches on there bodies I am guessing that it is the reflection of patches of scales any advice on ehat you think it might be and what treatment he could start, many thank's

 

[mattb]

Sounds like dropsey to me. Not sure on medication, or if there even is any. Maybe somebody else can help with that.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Yes, scales sticking out on the fish like a pinecone is dropsy. Its a pretty difficult condition to treat and it can be caused by a variety of things, the first thing i would look into is the water quality- i would advise going down to your local fish shop and buying some accurate test kits for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates (the Master test range of water quality test kits is good).
Is the pond filtered at all? How deep is the pond and how many gallons is it roughly (if you don't know, just give the dimensions of the pond i.e. length, width, depth)? How many koi (and other fish) does he have in the pond and what are their sizes roughly?

 

[GoldLenny]

Dropsy is the name of the visible symptom which looks like the scales are like a pinecone when viewed from above. The effect can be caused by several different internal issues from bacterial infection to parasitic infestation to organ failure, namely the kidneys so the fish is unable to expel fluids and bloats up like that. There is treatment available from a veterinarian where they give them shots of various antibiotics/meds to try and kill the cause of the dropsy symptom.

How big is your dads pond? How many Koi? Koi are supposed to get HUGE... around 3' long and should be 1/2 that size after two years. It could be water quality or stress issues from the fish being overcrowded or in too small of a pond.... a very common problem for people keeping goldfish and koi. They look at their pond like a tropical aquarium where they can have a big school of small zebra danios or neon tetras and think they can stock their pond the same way.... BUT IT WON'T WORK with big fish. Koi need a minimum of 300G each and that's if there is good filtration and overall pond ecology. The pond should be at least 6' x 18' x 3' deep and then you could have up to 5 Koi and that would be pushing it and the pond would require a lot of maintenance as the fish grow.

 

[sakaspuds]

if its red around the scales it probably a bacterial infection, your best bet, is find a good koi dealer in your area and ask for a pond visit, (they normally charge 30 quid) sometimes free if you buy all the meds from them, they will do a scrape and look for parasites and will do all the water tests for you, i could tell you a few things to try, but to be honest its always best to get an expert in straight away