Mistakes: How to Unkill a Koi......

[adreamer2]

Okay... I wanted to hear from you killer of koi!!!!....

What did you do to kill your koi.....

I'll tell you if you haven't already heard...... I had an 18" beautiful egg carrying Bekko.... In fact, I had about 40 koi of varying sizes... All of which were, individually, special purchases.....

I built my own filter.... and it worked like a charm.... One day, I had gotten this new material... and decided to use it in the filter.... It looked like it could withstand a lot of nitrates and detritus from the pump..... So, I used it.... In less than 15 hours, I awoke to check on my pond and found everything floating sideways.... nothing was alive....

All the beautiful creatures that I spent so much money on, fed for months on end, and loved watching with all my heart was no more....

We ended up burying the dead koi....

Which brings up another question: What did you do with you deceased????

Wow! That was macabre!!!!......

I cried for a week... I couldn't even look at my pond.... I wouldn't touch anything related to it.....

Then, I saw another creature and it took my heart again and brought me back to life.... It seems to be happy... so, I got it some friends....

Koi have character.... My kin showa certainly proved to be one of the meanest creatures out there... Slamming its tail at the new guys... and swimming away like a bourgoise wanna-be..... Like it just threw a mink stole across its chest....

So, after all that, what did you do to yours so that newbies will learn not to follow your steps and unkill a koi....


Adreamer2

[mike]

so what caused all the deaths of your kois?

[PapaBear]

'cause whatever it was I'd like to avoid the same mistake . Did you replace your established media with it or simply top off the old with something that was somehow contaminated? 100% mortality in less than 15 hrs is pretty extreme.
I've had one 4" yamabuki fry jump out of an outdoor qtank that was too full, 3 roughly the same size go down from a nitrate spike, but otherwise I've lost none to anything but a couple of snakes which I caught and dispatched.

[joe bauer]

how many koi have i killed through plain ignorance? i lost count a long time ago.


my learning curve has been hard on a lot of fish.

[Steve Nguyen]

Adreamer2,

sorry to hear that. I know who you felt. it's hard when a favorite fish went belly up let along a whole pond. I had one jump out the pond and a few got ulcers. I buried them in the back yard.

glad to hear you still not giving up the hobby completely.

Steve

[junglegeorge12]

Don't feel too bad adreamer, everyone loses koi, it is how we learn!

I ran over the neighbor's dog on our way home from a X-mas party this X-mas eve. It was running in front of us and I thought it ran off to the side of the road, when it had actually run under the car and stuck it's head right under the tire. It was gruesome and it died two days later. To show you a little about the culture here, the guy whose dog it was came over on 3 Kings day and gave my son a remote control truck. He was not even mad. He said "Stupid dog, I knew it was going to happen one day, he was so stupid, sorry it happened to you." I felt so horrible I could hardly talk to him after it happened. Now it is all ok.

[Surfhead]

So did this new material cause a PH crash? have come kind of toxic coating? what's was the material so we can know to avoid it.
As for your question about what to do with the dead fish, well I have never lost a koi bigger then 6" (knock on wood), but they go in a plastic baggie and put in the trash...not very ceremonial I know. BUT if I lost one of my biggest and more favorite koi? I would be heart broken for sure, might even turn me away from the hobby for awhile. Would I bury it? no...it would go in a plastic bag and get sent out in the trash. Not that burying a pet is a bad thing, it's just how I feel about a dead body of any sort...it is no longer a living thing, just an empty shell. To bury is a ritual for the living, not the dead.

[MikeM]

Any koi that has dies has been placed in plastic and disposed in the garbage. I would not bury one because it would attract raccoons, oppossums and likely other mischievous creatures.

[luke frisbee]

For MikeM (and others),
Bury ALL your koi...the injuns taught the pilgrims (and it is a great thing).
And do it right...go about three feet from a big tree, two feet from a small one. Use a post hole digger and go down a foot deeper than the koi is long; The koi will end up being 18 inches from the surface and that is the least stinky part, and no racoon is going to dig it up. Drop the fish in head first. backfill and stomp.
the tree might take a while to find it but it will feed off of it for years.
you've done the right thing on multiple fronts by doing this....tossing it is a waste and creates a problem.

[Flounder]

Luke pretty much sums it up on what I do to a dead koi. It's the perfect fertilizer for plants.

My biggest koi killer mistake was asking the wife to turn off the water that refills the pond.
I called her from work after 8 hours and she completely forgot.