Eye Flukes

[marco]

Hi my friends,
one of my friend call me today because he has some problems with two of hiskoï. Problems start two week ago, but because I was one week away in Scotland (golf) he wait until today to ask my opinion. The problem starts with an eye infection (only one side) then, he stop to eat and died. The second koi start also with a eye infection , stop to eat and get letargic . My friend put the koï in a quaranten tank, salt water and heat the water. When I arrive there he was really bad and when he died when I was leaving.
I found Gill flukes on the skin and on the gill and a really big infection on the gills. Salt and hot water surely help the koï to die.
I still have the first koï who died, wich is frozen. Tomorrow I will open the eye, make a microscope examination with some colorant and I will let you know if there is a relation between the two problems (I will try to count them if I find some... )
Marco

[marco]

Here is the only spot that I found making a microscopic examination of the liquid of the first chamber of both eyes and that could be a flukes...
Very difficult to say if it is really one or not, the koï was frozen and I didn't find any flukes on the skin or gill, but it has also a big infection on gill.
Not easy to recognize a flukes who doesn't move, but the size and the form seems the same.
So flukes or not ?
Marco

[koiczar]

Marco

My guess would be A fluke - just one will not cause enough damage to kill a fish. However, from what you have described as the symptoms of your friends fish, I would look more closely at the liver, kidneys and gall bladder for mass infection. Had a serious bacterial gill infection last year that cost me 12 fish before I could get it under control. Upon microscopic exam, we found the gills to be blotchy and necrotic (to say the least)! Not ONE SINGLE PARASITE on any fish examined!!
So, I resorted to chloramine -T. I also injected 6 fish with Amacacyn. One shot healed these fish in from 2 days to 2 weeks. They were back to eating the next day. As a side note-if you're not familiar with ChloramineT read about it first. It's very sensitive to Ph and the dosages are according to your Ph. Raising the temp had no effect either way, but nothing else worked either. ChloramineT is also sold by Argent Labs as BGDX. Don't take their dosage as fact. As I mentioned above, you MUST know your Ph.

Mike

[marco]

Thanks Mike, the picture shown concern what was inside the eye of a dead and frozen koï. I wanted to know if the eye problem he had on his two koï had a relation with the massive infection of flukes that I found on the koï who was still living when I made the scrap analysis. Really a massiv infection !
I made a supaverm treatment on the pond and injection of antibiotic (Draxxin) on the koï who was dieing, but too late for him....
I also think that it is impossible to recognize flukes on skin and gill once the koï has been frozen. The kidney, the blade and lever seems to be normal on autopsi, so I think that was really a massiv gill flukes infection ;putting the koï in a quarter tank with salt and hot water he make the problem bigger.
Thanks for your opinion.
Marco

[Sangreaal]

Well, it's abundantly clear that I couldn't get a pic of what's going on with my koi to save myself. But here's the kicker--the whole problem seems resolved. The specks started fading two days ago and are not apparent today. Eyes are clear and fish seem no worse the wear. I never did anything other than salting the QT to .2 with soft kosher salt (no additives), keeping the water changes going every day to control the nitrite/ammonia levels, upgrading the pump power to cycle the water through 20 times an hour, adding yet another air stone and using some feather rock to run the water over before it goes back into the tank.

It probably would have resolved on its own, and I'll never know what it was.

I'm just glad it's over.

Thanks to everyone with their insights, thoughts, admonitions and advice.

Marie