Koi Herpes Virus, maybe not!

From my experience ordinary parasitic outbreaks can look like it is KHV or worse. Many of the symptoms can be confused.  One exception is that simple parasite infections can be cured.

It is amazing how fast a pond can be over run with a parasite and how fast fish will return to normal when the correct treatment is found. I have seen fish with red sores beginning one day disappear overnight after the correct medication was finally used and then the pond was cured.

  One of the difficulties is in not killing the fish with kindness. In many cases antibiotics are not necessary at all and risk damage if over used. If K.H.V had been the problem antibiotics may not have helped anyway. Dosage and treatments must be exact. Sometimes nothing is better.

Quarantine for one week may not be enough time to see if the fish are going to break. It is enough time to pre-treat fish before trying to add them to a pond. Treatments for flukes or fish lice can be done in as little as four days. Other single cell parasites could be checked by a couple of different choices from salt to potassium permanganate to formalin (not all at the same time).

Some of the easiest parasites to see can be missed. Microscope exams of scrapes gill clips or fin clips can miss the bugs. I have seen fish dying that never showed they had parasites but got better right after prozi or dimilin.

Treating until they are un-symptomatic is a good protocol. If after 10 of salt or a couple of PP treatments fish are getting worse then it may be time to switch to something else like prozi. Without knowing what was wrong I would treat for flukes first and then see how they do.

Water conditions can degrade quickly from medications and antibiotics depending on what was used. Starting with treatments that have the least effect on filtration are better first choices.