In today's episode, we're gonna talk about quarantine protocols,
fish food, and parasites.
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Okay, we're kicking off the show with quarantine protocol.
This is not some zombie quarantine stuff.
When I talk about quarantine, people automatically think like, oh my
gosh, what's wrong, I just watched a zombie movie and I'm freaked out.
The quarantine of koi is strictly about making sure the koi is healthy
and is parasite-free before you introduce the fish into your pond.
If you ever had to medicate your pond, and
let's say you have a three or four thousand gallon pond,
it cost a lot of money to put medicine in a pond that big.
But if you have a small quarantine pond, two 300 gallons, and
then you can watch your fish and
make sure they're healthy before you put them in.
Then you can save yourself a lot of money.
I do want to tell you a couple stories in my experience.
I had one of my very good customers call me, and her fish were sick and
not doing well.
So, I raced over there to see what was going on.
And the most common way to introduce parasites into
your pond is adding new fish.
So, I get there, and I'm going, hey, what's going on,
did you add any new fish to the pond.
That's always my first question, did you put new fish in?
And she said, yeah, I just got this koi at a garage sale down the street
and I threw it in there.
And that was about a week and a half ago, and now,
all my fish are not doing well.
And I'm just like.
You bought a koi at a garage sale and threw it in your pond?
You can't do that.
You have to quarantine.
I got one other story for you about quarantine, and
how it's very important because I had a client,
long-time customer with a koi pond, very old fish and he was turning 70.
He got a, kind of a combo gift Christmas/birthday gift koi.
It was given to him around October or
November when the water temperatures are dropping really low,
they introduce the fish to the pond.
And he didn't see signs of parasites until spring.
You know, five, six months later, the fish start acting funny.
They get listless.
They start flashing, doing their thing.
And it actually took me about three days to figure out where
the parasites were coming from.
Cuz in six months, he's like, I didn't add any new fish.
I haven't added fish in years.
And then it dawned on him that he added one in the fall,
when the water temperature was cold.
So, quarantine protocol is really important, especially if you have
a really established pond with an established herd of koi, and
you want to add a new fish to your collection.
Please go through some quarantine protocol and
make sure it's safe before you put it in with the rest of your fish.
Okay.
I had one come into headquarters just the other day.
And we get this one frequently.
This one says, is my koi pregnant?
She's been fat for six months.
When is she going to have those babies?
So, typically, it's maybe in the off season where we might get
a question like this, where the fish have probably already spawned.
And, typically, I'll have the fish, get photographs of that fish, or
if they're close by I'll go visit the fish, or
maybe have the fish come and visit us at headquarters.
And, this particular instance, is my koi pregnant was an absolute no.
It was actually a male.
And unfortunately, if you're feeding a poor quality fish food, you can
see some of these fish can end up with fatty deposits and develop
around their organs and then their whole body is not working right.
Imagine if you ate fastfood everyday.
Would you be happy with the results of your body?
The answer's probably a no.
And the same thing can be said for your koi.
So you want to make sure you have a good quality food that you
are feeding them, and then, you are going to get good results with
their confirmation and so forth.
Oftentimes, sometimes, you might have a pregnant female,
and she has too much fatty deposits built up around her organs.
And then, when she goes to try and pass her eggs,
she can become impacted because you're feeding a poor quality food.
So the answer to that question is more often than not related to
what they're feeding the fish.
So not only is it good for your filtration,
but the confirmation for the koi, but it's just good for
the overall health of the pond to feed something good.
So if you think your fish is pregnant, send us photographs and
we'll take a look at and see if we can help determine what's going on.
But you're gonna get a question from me,
let me see what kind of fish food you're feeding to the pond.
Another question I have, it happens quite a bit, and
I get this a lot around spring and
it's gonna tie together back with quarantine protocol.
The question is, why are my fish jumping in the pond?
They jump out of the pond like Shamu and splash.
Some people think it's cool like, wow, look at my fish doing tricks.
If I can get it to jump through a hoop, maybe it would be cool.
That's actually a bad sign to see your fish jumping in the pond
like that.
Frequently, it can tell you that you have some parasites.
That's something that we wanna look for.
Now I wanna kind of throw out there that if you're transporting your
fish or koi.
Let's say you are taking a healthy koi, no parasites and
putting it into another container.
Often times, they might jump because it's a new environment and
they're unfamiliar with it and they're nervous.
So don't mistake that for what I'm talking about right now.
If you have a pond, it's healthy, everything is cool, and your
fish are jumping out of the water, I'm going to be worried about and
probably ask you, when was the last time you added new fish to the pond,
because it means you could have some parasites.
And typically, what's happening when the fish are jumping out of
the water like that is they have some irritation on their skins or
their sides and their jumping out of the water and
trying to get rid of an irritation, and
that's going to take me to another thing that they'll do frequenly.
Another question I'll ask you if your fish are jumping out
of the pond is if are your fish flashing?
That means the fish are swimming, and let's say,
they have a parasite on their side, they might turn sideways and rub.
And when they do that, they are swimming at you,
their belly goes to the sky.
Typically, their belly is white so
you see the sun flash on their stomach.
So if that's a term that we are going to use,
I want you to know that term, flashing.
And that's when their belly flashes in the sun when they are trying to
scratch off the parasite.
So, this whole episode today has kind of revolved around
parasites and having healthy fish.
So I hope that answers the question why your fish are jumping.
It's not a good thing, let's take a look at that.
Here's the question of the day I have for you.
Have you ever dealt with any koi parasites?
What did you do?
Put it in the notes right here on YouTube.
I'm curious of how you handled your problem, or
tell me if you lost all your fish, because if you did lose your fish,
it's a terrible thing, because most of the parasites can be handled very
easily if you catch it quick enough, okay?
That's the end of the show today, but I need you to subscribe.
Please do me a big personal favor and hit the Subscribe button.
We appreciate your support.
We'll talk to you again real soon.
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