Please contact me before sending any fish
for a post mortem so that I don't get them out of the blue.
Tissue samples
are sent for necropsy tests if my findings are inconclusive or I suspect a
bacterial infection. I will tell you now - most come back with aeromonas
hydrophila which normally when history is checked from poor conditions.
However, sometimes the finding are pseudomonas flourescens which causes open
ulcers and sometimes popeye.
If the findings are ascites, fin erosions,
infection of the fin muscle or pseudomonas putida (which is famous for turning
fishes bellies red just before death) then we may have a problem that is beyond
just poor pond condition.
These last two infections do not come over
night. They need deep investigation but I'm happy to say they are not all that
common.
Most deaths in a well run Koi pond are fish problem not a pond
problem and limited to a single fish.
Fish
TB is one problem which must be acted on straight away. Mycobacteriosis or
fish tuberculosis. is spread fish to fish by cannibalism and in the right
conditions can infect many fish, with the symptoms showing in other fish over
long periods rather thanall together. It can in theory take many years to show
itself in all infected fish.
A fish under going a post mortem will have
gill snips, spleen, kidney and liver spore tests. Additionally body scrapes for
parasite, flukes and protazoans, swim bladder checks and intestine fluid
tests.
I do not come to any finding until the fish as gone through a
full post mortem, no matter what is found initially.
This fish died of sepsis. As you
can see by the size of the gall bladder, this denotes the liver was about to
fail. Secondly, the egg mass was sour and infected. The heart which I have
extracted is pale and over sized should be full of blood.
This is the
symptom of a stroke, which is the prime course of death. Also the fish was
suffering from fatty degeneration of the internal organs see (
fat fish under health) - when I opened the fish up the
internal organs just rolled out, as picture shows.
The fish had been
dead 5 mins - for once I had arrived at client's in time to perform a
post-mortem, as the fish was in i's last breaths of life.
This is one of the largest
abscesses I have ever seen on a large chagoi. Before being opened, the lump was
bigger than a goose egg and had come up in 3 days.
There was 250ml of
pink puss within the abscess, and I advised the client to let me put the fish
to sleep, as by the size of the lump and the speed it had arrived this was the
only safe course of action.
One should never attempt to drain an
abscess of this size, as treatment would be futile.
His son kindly assisted by keeping
the abscess open so I could take this picture for my records.
I could
find no injury which would account for this. He had this fish for 10 years and
had lavished much love and care on his koi collection.
In a lot of
cases no reason for the abscess can be
found.