[Mark Cooper]

Dear Mark,
I was very sorry to read about your Shiro , and thanks for sharing that. It is always difficult to legislate I guess for such extreme and virulent bacterial outbreaks like this though, and thankfully that does seem to be a rare occurrence (at least in my experience). I had a similar thing happen to a new Koi of mine many years ago, but at least the Koi was in QT.

I can understand why you would want to mitigate the risk of this happening again, but I was wondering…do you think that if your dealer had used antibiotics prophylactically that they would have hit on the right antibiotic soon enough though to effect a cure ? I can understand why you chose your binary approach too for QT; a responsible approach which requires considerable knowledge and experience to design and implement.

Another thought occurs to me, and I’d be interested to hear your views on this please Mark. Take the hypothetical example of a Koi dealer who uses antibiotics prophylactically, and a hobbyist purchases a Koi from said dealer, probably being unaware that it has been treated with antibiotics. Then as part of that hobbyist’s QT protocol it goes through another prophylactic course of antibiotics. Is that good for the Koi ? Does it increase the risk of antibiotic resistance ?

So, just to share with you “where I coming from” here Mark…. when I was trained, the prophylactic use of antibiotics was considered unprofessional without first having cultured antibiograms and then selecting the anti-biotic which had a positive effect. I do realise that this takes time and skill though, and few hobbyists can avail themselves of such services. Even in those days there were grave concerns about the increasing numbers of antibiotic resistant organisms. Hence I am concerned about how less knowledgeable Koi keepers may interpret and implement the prophylactic use of antibiotics, because like you I have noticed during my two and a bit decades of keeping Koi that some of the antibiotics we used to use (at least here in the UK) are largely ineffective now, probably because of misuse. How do we as a Koi-keeping community avoid this ?

My sincere concern is for the long term health of our Koi and our hobby and ensuring that in the future that we still have antibiotics that are effective.
I am sure that you understand my point of view…..but nonetheless please “educate me”, as we are all here to share and learn for one another. Thanks, and Happy Koi-keeping