gavin

Had just checked all nitrite,nitrate, ph, amonia and general pond balance and all were okay.nitrite was not zero but was less than 0.3 mg.so all okay.took one of my dodgey looking fish to local stockist and they checked the water and did a scrape thinking that the fish may have got some sort of parasite, by coincidence at the same time we added the blanket answer but all levels were okay and the scrape came up clear!!! am now in the middle of emptying and refilling the pond for the second time in two nights and have been cleaning the filter as we do it.when we used blanket answer i was cleaning the filter and pump every evening. water looking worse now than before we added blanket answer(wish we hadnt bothered)especially as we didnt have that great a problem just a bit on the sides and bottom. One of my fish has now started jerking(the one we took for a scrape) any ideas what this might be?

gavin

i spoke to cloverleaf today....after about a half hour explanation(from the guy at the help desk) of how a new pond gets established and the raising of nitrite and amonia levels(which we added a.v.a. to to bring down) he then proceeded to inform me that any time you add a chemical to the pond it reduces the oxygen levels(although this happened in our pond about 2 months ago)......surely the fish would have been gasping for air or at the very least swimming under the waterfall!!!! and after trying every excuse which i then informed him we had taken the correct action- cleaning the filter every day checking the ph,nitrite etc levels taking the fish for a scrape his last reason for my fish loss was this;-
that it was an accumilation of everything and that if one fish gets distressed it can build up mucas which the other fish then copy and swim around at the bottom of the pond and, although they are still feeding, they wont be taking as much oxygen into their bodies because of the mucas! he then advised me to treat them as though they had white spot(to get rid of the mucas) although the malachite would then decrease the oxygen levels even more!!!
he also blamed the sterlet loss on the high temperatures!!! what high temperatures!!!
my tench however seem to be picking up today after the water change although 2 koi still look dodgey!!has anyone heard of the fish doing this before? and do you think this is the correct remedy!I dont and havent added anything else.