Any of you guys have experience with koi?
My very favorite , Major Magic, looked a little distended yesterday and today he has that dreaded pine cone appearance. Still swimming and acting normally. I have a veterinary manual and it is suggesting adding salinity to the koi pond. I suppose if I had to I could give him a baytril injection if it gets worse. But I have never added salt to my pond before. A 0.3% solution sounds like it wouldn’t be dangerous to the others. Any experience or input would be helpful.

Dang I actually saw a video a while back on this , was one of them gold fish breeders and it solution was too hard ....can't remember if it had someone to do with iodine or what though

You can put iodine on a wound. My fish are friendly and I think that getting them with a net into a large bowl for examination and treatment. But handling could create stress that could put him over the edge. There are instructions for intra muscular and intra peritoneal injections here in this book. I can’t just throw him in a cat carrier and take him to work. I’d have to manage myself if it comes to it. We are studying and seriously thinking about the salt but we are nervous

You probably already know this but do not use iodized/table salt. Use a quality aquarium or pond salt. Use an isolation tank if possible. Eric

When we had our big rubber liner pond we would put in salt. Now our koi pond is the pond, we feed them everyday, some are approaching 20 years old, no maintenance. My advice would be just to let them be. Ammonia is the big problem.

Shiners get this.
I go for one small dallop of
table salt as soon as I can.
My tank is 70+ gals.
.

There is a store bought med for this.
I can id it tomorrow.

Mo koi experience here.
Other than predation.

Thanks all. I wish I had room for an iso tank. This is our fourth year with the pond and we have four original koi and about two dozen comet fish. They all came together.
We did the salt treatment and managed to turn him over to look for sores but not seeing any.
Here is him when he looked good. I can’t even bear to take a photo of him now. He looks twice as bad as yesterday!


That book I have has Ten Commandments of koi keeping and number one is; your favorite fish will die first, try not to name your fish
Smash=Fail

Garlic helps with their immune system

You can treat the fish in a small kiddy pool

Something may be going on with your water quality, not enough dissolved oxygen? Ph levels , too much ammonia

PH us a tad high at 8..I think the uv filter has a role to play in that. Zero ammonia levels. I have excellent aerators and filtration. Maybe I just have a badly bred koi idk…

Here's the granddaughter with some new koi , about a month ago , they got a salt bath before going in the pond

That's all good , so at least you can check it off the list .


Hmmmmm

Salt bath worth trying I think

It may be an internal parasite , and if you can get it to eat , you can treat the food with garlic guard .......but at pinecone stage if it won't eat it may be toast

Anti ,he is still eating. Thank you so much for the good advice. And what a beautiful little granddaughter you have! She’s an Angel

Geez, those things look almost to pretty to eat.

I hope your luck with pets changes soon you’ve had a pretty rough run lately.

Thank you and yes we have. Last year was almost too much to bear. Tomorrow we are sweating Jezebelle to see if there are any changes with her throat. I’m not optimistic

One of my properties has a single yellow koi in a pond that was there when I bought the place in 2010. He looks to be over 2ft and looks loke 8" across the back. How long do these things live?

15-30 years, Japanese koi 40+. Eric

Smash stress coat will help put the slime coat back on the fish they lose from handling them.