Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations New experience to learn from

Some of my brook trout in the pond are having disease problems. See the pics of the one below. I'm losing as many as one per day and you can see the morbid ones (not many) hanging listless near shore under something. Most likely it's a pseudomonas or aeromonas infection. I have to wonder if it's being started by skin parasites, as the pattern looks like something moving in different directions on the skin. Then following by a bacterial infection after the skin protection is compromised?


In the water the fish appear to have their slime layer peeling off but it cleans up after a dip in a 3 percent salt solution and holding in a tank set at .5 percent.

Anyway I'm going to attempt to take one to Purdue University's diagnostic lab alive tomorrow morning. I don't want to lose the work time but I have no choice as no vets in my area are interested in free training on taking fish samples. (In all fairness to the vets they rarely see fish enough to probably justify it.)

I have to take one of these fish alive preferable.

I'll keep you guys posted if you're interested. I'm hoping if it's parasites a 2 percent potassium permanganate solution will knock them down.

Cecil:

Do you want the cooler and aerator?

Thanks for the offer but I'm going to use mine. No need to drive all the way over here. I'll put lots of plastic down to keep the wife happy and tie another piece above the cooler.

Cecil

Cecil, it looks like ammonia toxicity to me. Have yo checked the level lately? Is this the pond that was not taking feed well?

Add a couple hundred ponds of stock salt to the water since that seems to help.

I don't think so Rex. It's only effecting a few of the fish and they weren't accepting feed as well as they used to while I was still running the well. I just don't believe there are enough fish in the pond to get ammonia levels up in 100,000 gallons.

I may crank up the well but that can be as stressor too with a sudden increase in iron and drop in PH.

You're probably right Cecil. I just know they are very sensitive to ammonia and the markings look just like all my freshly killed trout.

I'd still toss in the salt as it can't hurt and it has helped the ones you have dipped.

I (as well as othere I assume) will be interested in what Purdue says! Are you running down to Lafayette?

I may not. I've got a few customers screaming for their fish mounts and others that aren't picking them up so I'm not sure I can afford to take the time off. And I talked to a trout farmer who told me it will probably be a waste of time. He says it will take a few weeks to get the results and by then I may have lost a fair amount of fish. (He's right. I once sent some fish down, and it took a month for the results to come back, and they refused to make an educated guess or advise a treatment in the mean time. I lost almost all of those fish which were crappies.

The trout farmer says if it was him he would throw a broad spectrum antibiotic at them, which I do have some but not enough for the full five days. I'm ordering some right now.

He contends, as does another trout farmer, that they are in peak spawning mode and that spells stress. On top of that another vet and one of the trout farmers thinks they may be fighting which is doing damage to their skin which lets in bacteria.

Maybe you could remove the ones that dont look so hot. If its a parasite you might lessen the chance or quickness that it spreads...

I can't imagine the amount of antibiotic that you'll need for that particular "aquarium"!

Definitely doing so.

Oh God no you don't add it to the water like you do in an aquarium! Yeah that would be some water treatment for 100,000 gallons! But believe it or not it wouldn't take much potassium permanganate to treat a pond this size at 2 ppm. (Used to kill parasites and gram negative bacteria I believe).

Actually you either order the antibiotic premixed in with the feed, or you buy the antibiotic seperate and add it to the feed yourself. In this case you just add water and the feed at I believe 2.5 percent. Minimum order was 5 lbs. of Romet ( a broad spectrum antibiotic)so I probably have enough for the next few years if needed. That's 2.5 lbs. added per 100 lbs. of feed and I've been feeding much much less.

The trout farmer that said taking a fish to Purdue would be a waste of time basically said they would tell me I have a bacterial infection anyway so why wait for results when you can feed them a broad spectrum antibiotic? He raised brook trout and said pretty much welcome to the club. They can be a real PITA.

Interestingly today I had just enough Romet feed for one day (left over and frozen) and they fed better than they have in a long time. Go figure.

The Romet antibiotic was overnighted today so I should get it tomorrow. You only have to feed for five days straight vs. 10 days for oxytetracycline laced feed.

Rex,

Since my reagent for my ammonia meter expired back in 2006 and I got a different reading every time I tried it I got some test strips from the aquarium department at Wallmart.

Ammonia, and nitrites were too low to even show up on the test strips, so even though they are probably not the most sensitive tests in the world, I'm thinking that tells me ammonia is not a problem.

PH is pretty high though at 8.4 which is typical once the well water sits in the pond for a while. It's 7.5 from the well but the pond soil apparently raises it. I don't have any diurnal changes in PH in my ponds as the alkalinity is about 350. This difference in PH probably explains why the trout get stressed when I first crank up the well in the spring. I'm thinking I should pulse it to give them time to acclimate. After all since the PH scale is logarithmic the well water is almost 10 times more acidic than the pond water right?

Your water parameters look great!

I asked Marvin Emmerson, whose family developed the Emmerson strain of trout in Ava, Mo. to look at your pics and give his opinion. IIRC, he said PH was not much of an issue with trout. I also doubt your inflow would change the PH fast enough to cause any stress---Not much different than runoff into a natural stream.

Try your antibiotics. I'd still add some salt--it's cheap and is a stress reducer.

Sorry to hear about your trout Cecil...

Are you sure? The pond is 100,000 gallons and I run about 64,000 gallons through the pond in 24 hrs. when the well is running. I do know there are trout hatcheries with low PH's that have problems when there is a heavy rain as the rainfall PH is even lower. I've also heard of PH shock with heavy snow melts in watersheds in New England that already have low PH's.



Yeah I'd like to add the salt and hope to. I may do a PP treatment too.

I'm thinking of adding Aquashade like I did last fall. My thoughts are reduced visibility will reduce fighting.

Do you see any females in there? If it's just a few, maybe you can remove them and that would help reduce the fighting as well?

How long you would temper a new trout---at most about 30 minutes?

At 64,000GPD, thats more than 24 hours for tempering. From my limited experience, almost all fish stress and disease seem to be water quality related. You are lucky enough to be able to change it relatively quickly.

Thanks for your concern. I'll get the bugs worked out soon (no pun intended). You would think I would have all the bugs worked out by now but I'm still learning. Interesting thing is the last strain I had from the Indians weren't this aggressive. The problem was the fins were terrible from being in a raceway for two years and it was a 13 hour drive to pick them up. They were also stunted from being in 45 degree water year around. These fish have a much better appearance if they are not blemished with the bacteria. The males get a very pronounced high back and the colors are brilliant. One good thing is it's not a massive epidemic or anything. It's a small percentage of fish.



I'm not seeing any females but there could be some. The source was supposed to sort all males for me and it appears that way. A trout farmer told me the lack of males won't necessarily stop the fighting though. However if there were females perhaps it could be worse? I have to wonder if the fact that these are a cross between a Canadian and eastern strain makes them have some kind of "hybrid vigor" that makes them more aggressive. Just a thought though.

I may add Aquashade to see if by reducing visibility it may reduce aggression. What do you think? I was looking forward to viewing them under the ice but...

You're probably right. It may be the sudden influx of iron particles irritating their gills that is more of a problem than the PH change which may not be as quick as I thought. However I'm thinking with the iron it may not be bad to pulse the well either. It would give them more time to adapt.

One thing that makes me feel better is I'm not alone. I had more than one trout farmer on a regional list serve I belong to say raising brook trout is a pain in the ... and they have similar problems. This would explain why it's hard to find brook trout suppliers vs. rainbows.

You won't know til you try, but my gut feeling is the aquashade won't make much difference... Unless you got it really really dark.

Well I'm still getting emails from the regional Aquaculture list serve with trout farmers, state trout hatchery superintendents, and fish pathologists. The ideas are all over the board but the I've got several people telling me to get fish to Purdue University stat at least for a skin scrape to look for parasites. So I'm going to see if I can take at least one down Thursday. One trout hatchery superintendent says he'd bet money it's a parasite problem probably trichodina, but possibly costia, or chilodonella.

I'm going to see if i can find some Pottassium Permanganate and do a treatment stat which won't hurt anything if done correctly. The other alternative is formalin which isn't practical in a pond this size. I've still got apparently unaffected fish in the pond and I want to keep it that way. I do have two or three that don't look so hot.

The wife is has a four day weekend so I now have access to the better vehicle to take a drive to Purdue University tomorrow morning. Going to take down at least one brook trout tomorrow if I can capture one in the morning.

I started them on a antibiotic laced feed if it is indeed a bacterial infection, but of course that does not help the ones that are not feeding.

I'm really curious if they have a severe parasite infestation which according to one hatchery manager can be the precursor to the a bacterial infection, and since I don't have a microscope...

I'm having my doubts about the fighting theory as I'm not seeing any aggressive behavior among the apparently healthy fish.

I ordered some PP if I need to make a pond treatment.

Good Luck tomorrow Cecil, hope you figure it out.

Hey Cecil,

Reading back thru this thread it looks like you were facing a difficult problem. What was the outcome?

Bill D.