by I bought two butterfly Koi from Petsmart last October. The largest one (10 inches) is was
transferred to the pond about a month ago and is doing fine. The other one is about 9 inches and
I kept it inside in a 29 gallon aquarium. It has gotten red spots near tail area as it leaves
the body part. I have treated it with salt and it goes away but the area appears to be thicker
than the other parts of the tail. This last two days, spots appeared then protruded from the
tail like polyps. Today the fish lost about 3/8" of tail at the point where the spots and
thickening appeared. The fish feeds well, swims well and appears normal.
I did treat with Paracide Green last night and gave it a salt bath this evening. I think I'll
treat again tomorrow with paracide green.
Since I have built a new pond and have had water in it for three weeks, I was wondering if it
might do better in the new pond? The pond has a waterfall and stream and a 100 gallon stock tank
bio-filter. The filter has had water in it for a month. I did leave plastic parts in the first
pond for three weeks to hopefully have bacteria attach to the parts before putting them in the
stock tank. The water is pumped from my original pond to the stock tand and then to the
waterfall into the second pond. The water has been circulating between the two for only one day.
All the present fish appear healthy and active.
The water in the first pond has cleared considerably since I started the pump, waterfall and
stream. The string algae and blanket algae were getting quite thick but the circulating water
appears to have helped tremondously.
Steve Johnson, Littleton, Colorado -zone 5
http://lornet.com/~alside/pond.htm