| great, and remember trichodina is a natural species to any pond. It usually is content to feed in the leaf litter and mulm and to cruise over algae and also the koi, eating dead bacteria on the slime coat. It is the 'out of control' numbers that causes the problem. And that is caused by too great an organic load in the water. In other words, the only thing that cause a trichodina explosion is dirty water, dirty pond, dirty filter and as a result of all that, stressed and weak koi due to these water quality issues.
With trichodina, there is a natural association with bad bacteria like aeromonas. Aeromonas is also living in all our ponds. But it is count or number and the weakened koi that is the problem. If the water is rich in organics you are likely to have both trichodina and aeromonas in our pond somewhere - or at least the possibility of both. Certainly you have aeromonas.
So aeromonas is not even a 'hitch hiker' on trichodina. It is more like seeing vultures AND jackels around a dead animal on the African plain.
The sample can't be said for flukes which by their crawling action, have aeromonas as a natural resident on the haptors or 'grappling hooks' they use to hike themselves along. This is in effect ,like an injection of bacteria into the epidermis on fish with poor slime coat production ( again, due to stress) and so the aeromonas count becomes very important even with the incidental presense of a fluke to two.
In all cases I might not treat an established pond if a single example of trichodina were found. I would monitor the fish with weekly scapes and redouble my efforts towards a cleaner environment. But the immediate treatment might not always be the answer. and remember trichodina has it's own predator problems in an outdoor pond, especially at certain times of the year. I have absolutely tested ponds with a single trichodina found on one of a dozen scrapings, only to come back and retest and find no trichodina at all, anywhere?
If numbers increase from one to a half dozen, you are loosing the battle and now must treat. If infestations are chronic, look to system design, stocking levels or feeding rountines ( too much food).
Hope this puts things into perspective. if you are still concerned, quarantine the media, make sure it is mulm free and not subject to biofouling ( the natural food source for trichodina because it is a place to hunt it's favorite food, dead/live bacteria). And you can even treat the media with a PP dose. In this case, you will knock down some bacteria but the biofilm with protect the deeper layers of bacteria. You will still have the complete aray of species and co-species for a rather quick start as the system will likely not need to cycle as much as just grow in number to meet the stocking levels. This is a variable however and depends on the amount of media transferred and the die back levels. Best of luck, JR | 
03-01-2008
Quote: 
Linear Mode
Similar Threads 
