bung head, square jaw

[ranskye]

hi everybody,

i have a problem with my last batch of koi that i just harvested.
they have this weird head shape with a sqaurish jaw line, some of them the gills are flared up as well.
these affected fish seem to have softer bodies as well.
you could call them box heads, bung heads or square jaws.
whats the real name of this problem, apart from the owner being a slack arse..

id say a good 1/3 of the 3000 odd fish have this problem.
very saddening. these fish were the best fish that i had selected at 3-5cm to grow on and they range from 15cm and smaller, most of them are about 8cm.

ive heard this problem may be caused by too much nutrient/ too big a bloom.
i did let this pond get too rough water wise before i did an exchange.

also when i changed the water the pond wouldve changed dramtically and possibly it experienced a lack of oxygen as the iron oxidised.

also i may have had low oxygen levels throughout bad weather with the big bloom.

the pond is a plastic lined one and i havent had much experience running koi in there, ive not had this problem as extreme before this occasion but have seen it in the odd fish here and there over the years.

i put that down to overcrowding in my net holding cages with the more extreme cases showing mayeb a dozen fish with this bung head.
all these fish affected will be flogged as feeder fish.

anyway im wondering if someone knows the exact casue of this problem.
i know that i cant get away with the water being that high in nutrient and being that foul again but is there some better explantion as to why the fish change shape of the heads in such a way?

thanks in advance.

[dick benbow]

Don't it always seem to go.....that your best spawn would be involved with something like what you experienced. The mishapened heads usually indicate
an over crowding and the turned up gills ( sometimes even pecs turn up ) are a condition caused by the lack of oxygen. With the heads there isn't anything much that can be done, but by surgically removing the turned up gill flaps you have a good chance they will repair and heal correctly

[Richard Rombold]

I've seen the same problem a number of years ago. It also occurs with goldfish. I narrowed the cause down to nutritional deficiency and or inorganic fertilizers. I can't be any more specific than this as the problem disappeared before I could learn more. It is not genetic and it happens at the earliest stages of their development.

[bekko]

ranskye, if "bung head" is the same as "smash face", then I think you have done a good job of answering your own question. Do you have any photos?

Someone should give that deformiity a proper name.

-ste ve

[ranskye]

thanks to all that replied, ive kept a few nicer fish that were not affected so much to see how they turn out as they grow in size.
however i belive the reaosn we dont see this condition in older fish as they have been culled out by then.

it definately isnt genetic as i also had some goldfish that i threw in that pond for future breeders and yes they did also become affected in about the same ratios.

in reference to the previous post in regards to inorganic ferts possibly bringing on this problem, it may be that a certain bloom with inorganic ferts had led to a crash and low oxygen level in the pond, however my pond was not given any fertilisers but fed a lot of feed pellets only.
i dont think ill go into a trial to see whether it was caused by a big bloom or a lack of oxyegn but will choose to avoid the same conditions that the pond was subject to. so the jury on that might still be out yet.

i have taken a few pics of the deformity also, the shots show the gill lifting out and also the squaring up of the jaw from underneath.
it is interesting that a lot of the fish with this problem have a shorter snout also.
the fish are easy to notice in a net bowl as they tend to be the ones that have a hard time holding straight position.
whether this shows up the fish that dont do so well with lower oxygen levels to begin with or whether the deformity decreases the ability to oxyegneate the body im not so sure but i think maybe it possible that the fish that have a higher oxygen requirement are more liable to the deformity.

i was able to pick most fish out as they floated up on their sides when crowded in a bowl while the good fish held strong position and could swim around as normal.

i did find three fish in the pond caught or hiding in a submerged fish grader that had thier tail tips rounded off also, these fish were of the softest body type and it may be that all the healthy fish hiding amongst the grader bars had escaped while the sluggish bung heads were not capable of swimming away.

[bekko]

Ranskye,

I've seen some with the bung head/smash face which were worse than that. The side-view profile of the back gets screwed up too when they are really bad. A local friend has some photos of goldfish which had it. I'll see if he can find them for us. He calls them "camel face".

-steve

[IQzero]

I have no clue about koi breeding, but from the pictures you posted, I would suspect that as the body grows, The frontal part of the head did not expand proportionately.

If this is true, could it be due to malnutrition or calcium deficiency? When you mentioned "softest body" is it also soft bones?

The gills turning up was probably due to lack of oxygen, but it may be attributed to deformed head as you said.

[ranskye]

So it seems we have a few home made common names from different regions.
ol camel face is a good one. poor things are all messed up bad. i feel like satan now.

somone told me that it may be a bacterial type infection leading to the disease but that was just a guess.

i recall years ago seeing a batch of shubunkins in a shop with the same problem and i thought that it was actually how the shubunkin breed was shaped..and lately i wondered what ever happened to that line of shubunkins that look so sick and droopy. for some reason they reminded me of that book with the cat that ate green eggs and ham..dr suez?

now i know those fish werent sposed to look like that!

my calcium levels are high, i dont think that the bones are suspect but the body definately seems affected also. they are not rigid with muscle, that may have something to do with ability to oxygenate the body and muscle as well i guess..
it seems that the snout pulls back and the head shortens to provide for the folded up square jaw but who knows maybe the jaw fold is part and parcel of the head shortening..
vice versa.
they also go higher on the top of the noggen, but ive seen many variations on shape actually. they arent slender and fighting fit thats for sure.

i first heard of bung head when a young guy at a shop said he didnt want to buy our comets casue they were bung heads. this was about five years back, i had little idea but i could see what he meant.
i went through and removed all the lionhead comets from the breeders to try and breed pure comets with standard heads,
looking back now we probably were selling lionheads and some bungheads.

i guess by not having this problem arise over the years ive been able to supply good comets and any stray bung heads go out as feeders anyway but this crop has brought the issue up as an environmental one.
buckets full of bungs.

this pond was different in that it was built more recently ( maybe two years max) and is under a hothouse with little air movement and no wind ruffling and we only used emergency blower aeration for night time around cloudy periods. the other ponds have ag pipe to remove foul water from the bottom too.
no doubt i missed a few days of air along the way.

i plan to make some more aerators up to run 24-7, still, ill keep these ponds for livebearers in the future as that has been going well the last year or more.

next year its all back to the big outside ponds, and ill just have to spare a big pond for ongrowing the select koi.
such a shame seeing nice colours go to waste.

[Richard Rombold]

I would cast some doubt on oxygen depletion as the culprit. I've seen it in goldfish crops very early in the year with light blooms and cool water. I can vouch that in this case oxygen was never a concern. Common thread then may be poor nutrition. Possibly a vitamin deficiency. My pond management practices are constantly evolving and it's been years since I've seen this in the ponds. I'm glad though that you have started this thread because I have always wondered about the cause of the deformity.

[bekko]

Richard,

You know, the flared gill deformity occurs in a lot of different cultivated fish. Even marine species. A physiology professor at Univ. of Hawaii says he has some evidence that flared gill is caused by a vitamin C deficiency. I thought he was crazy because green water is full of vitamin C. Then he explained that environmental conditions can impact a fish's ability to take up vitamins and minerals, synthesize amino acids, and perform a variety of other bodily functions. When everything is linked and interacting like that, it becomes difficult to sort it all out. That may be why there are so many different opinions/theories about the cause of these deformities. I have also read that flared gill is caused by high nitrate levels.

The only thing I know for sure is that when I raise goldfish to the first cull with clear water, lots of water exchange and careful cleaning there is never a flared gill or camel face deformity - not one. Unfortunately, it's tedious to keep them adequately fed under these conditions (versus letting them graze in a much richer green water environment).

-steveh op