| This is a great post, ray. Like mike said, I think the flood of 'fix all' poison is partly to be blamed for the problem. In many situation, the hobbyies should also bear some responsibility in taking the 'easy way out' of dumping in the 'fix all' poison.
since people of all walks are in this hobby, we cannot prevent tragedy from happening. If anything is to be done, I think koi joins are the starting point. Theorittically, it shoudl work like this :
- customer pick koi
- koi operator ask :
- do you have water testing kit ?
- what is your pond setting ? filtration, size ?
- how many koi do you have, and plan to have ?
- how often do you do water change and filter cleanup ?
- do you have a good net and tub ?
- can you net you koi from your pond ? (most will say 'piece of cake', but we need to ask anyway)
- do you know salt and its relation with koi keeping ?
- do you know how to cleanup wound/ulcer using PP, H2O2, and dress it up with medication ?
I know there are a lot more question to be asked. However, by starting at some basic questions, a koi join operator can easily determined if someone is ready for koi. If he/she has the good intent, the hobbyist can learn to start in the right direction for a happy hobby.
When we started this hobby, only 1 place asked about the size of our pond, the other ask about the filtration. Everone wanted us to buy load of koi. I have paid dearly learning things I did not learn when we got started, and my back is hurting thru the learning process.
stan |