| Mark Cooper,
Thank you for your view point on prophylactic antibiotic treatment and your much warranted concerns about antibiotic resistance. I don’t agree with your statement but I do respect it. To reduce the chance of antibiotic resistance I’ve employed the binary application of gram-positive and gram-negative for a period of 20 days. If I were less responsible, a broad spectrum antibiotic such as tetracycline or sulfa drugs, would instead be employed. These are not as effective as they once were, due to their misuse resulting in the creation of many bacteria that are now resistant to them.
I imported a beautiful and expensive Shiro this January. My koi dealer in California put it into quarantine upon arrival from Japan. It died two weeks into the quarantine because of bacterial causes (somewhat uncommon, I believe). Keep in mind this is a very knowledgeable and professional dealer. He opted not to use a prophylactic treatment and was unable to diagnose the problem in time. The results are a beautiful koi lost its life and the dealer incurred a monetary loss of several thousand dollars.
Mark
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