Last year I had this, but warm water cleared it up, as many of the koi
sites I visit indicated it would ( koi sites are great places to find
information about ponds, regardless of species of fish you keep).
This year is happened again, but warm water only slowed the problem down,
but it is still occuring. The problem is not specie specific. Affecting
sunfish, mudminnows, cyprinids, killis and maybe some others.
I am not sure what causes the wounds, or if they could be from a number of
things. The wound, or even a bruise looking area, will open up into a sore.
This will then spread and become infected with a secondary cotton like
fungus. It keeps growing until the fish is dead. The only ones to survive
bad cases of this are a large green sunfish, and some fundulus grandis. They
still have small wounds where it was, but for the most part are back to
normal.
According to my stonefly nymphs, I have clean water. The water is clear. I
do have some algae problems, but nothing on an epidemic to indicate I have
tons of organic load.
Its really bugging me since it just seems to keep perpetuating itself. The
bio load seems to be very small now that many large fish were wiped out. I
thought that might be the problem, but it is still occuring. I have seen
this in local lakes this spring as well.
It is not a total wipe out though, since elassoma zonatum, eastern
mudminnow, central mudminnow, bluespotted sunfish, least darter, red shiner,
spotfin shiner. blackstripe topminnow , h formosa, sailfin molly, and
possibly others have all spawned and the young are doing good. I would
think sensitive fry with all the things that could break them open to
infection would not even survive.
I am not sure the size of my pond, but the best estimates are 15,000
gallons. I takes about 5 hours to fill the main part from the bottom up if I
remember right, and using the formulas to calculate volume the best I could
with such an irregular shape is what I used to determine this.
I am guessing it is something I probably will have to live with and hope it
goes away, but any input would be greatly appreciated.
Ray
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