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.
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?
