Pond Fish

[drhardware]

[FONT="Trebuchet MS"]Hi All,
I am new to this site, and I hope I'm not in the wrong place! I have a 350 Gal. pond, with 6 koi. I don't have an aquarium, so I hope I can still participate.

My question is this - one of my koi is floating on its side. When I touch it, it rights itself, and swims away. It then seems fine for awhile, but resumes floating on its side within a few minutes.

Its belly seems a little distended, and there are no signs of parasitic worms, or other viral, bacterial, or fungal maladies.

The water tests OK.

Any suggestions?
Thanks!

[megastealer]

I've seen people here suggest things like this are a swim bladder infection, which I assume causes pain in its swim bladder, and thus doesn't like to keep itself upright. When you touch it though, I guess its fear of being eaten overcomes the pain and it runs away.

The cure for this is to feed less, I've seen some people say to fast it and not feed it for 3 days.

[drhardware]

Thanks, Mega I'll give it a try. Just today, I saw a long (3"), fairly thick strand in the bottom of the pond. I think it might be a worm (tapeworm?), but I'm not sure. I will try not feeding them for a day or two.

DrH

[smaug]

6 koi in a 350 gal pond is very tight and unless they are all well under 10" it is very much overstocked.I have kept koi for years and my first 5 years of the experiance were in a far too small of a pond as well.I have never had any diseases like you describe but I treated my pond just like a fish tank.That is,I gave it 25% plus water changes every week,cleaned the filter regular.I added mela fix and pima fix as a weekly regimen as well because I knew I was so overstocked.I recomend you find a pond specific web site to research this better and I recomend and belong to this one,maybe someone will know what is wrong there. http://www.pondkoi.com/forum/index.php