Koi Miracle

[MarshyRooster]

My family recently moved to a house with a koi pond in the backyard. There were nine koi in it, although we only realized that exact number yesterday. The koi pond was really dirty and hard to see in, and you couldn't see the koi unless they came up to eat, so yesterday, my family and I cleaned it. It took buckets and buckets and buckets and buckets and took a long time to drain, and then it wouldn't finish the draining so, more buckets! Then, when it was pretty shallow, we had to get the fish out before continuing.
We caught them all with nets, one at a time, very gently. One got stuck in the net and my brother, who's sort of a fish expert, had to untangle her. Finally, we thought there was just one left in the pond- Speckle. Speckle swam around people and tried to bite them until my sister started scooping mud out of the pond and accidentally caught her. And then, right before we were about to completely empty the pond, we discovered Shred was still in there. My sister caught her, too. So, once we were done with the pond and were just letting it refill with clean water using the tubes we'd used to drain it, we all went inside for a while. When I came back out that evening, I found that Ever, one of the smaller koi, was flipping over and over, and then she sank down and didn't come back up for a long time. After waiting a while, I went to get my brother. He checked on her and said that she wasn't dead, but she was dying. My dad came out a little while later and put her in the small pool with three other fish (before he did that, she was with two other fish). She was on her side and not moving, but the other three fish swam to her and pushed her up and then they stayed bunched around her as they pushed her around the small pool until she started to swim on her own.
So the other fish basically saved Ever.
Has this happened to anyone else? I think that this probably happens sometimes, but why didn't the fish she was with before help her?

-MarshyRooster

 

[Reliablesquirrel]

Wow

 

[My2butterflies]

She sounds like she was in shock. Completely draining a pond and then refilling it can shock fish to the point of killing them. Sounds like you got lucky and it pulled through.

Have you tested your source water that you filled the pond up with? If it has ammonia in it that can harm them too till it gets fully cycled.

My well occasionally has 4ppm of ammonia so I need to add a water conditioner to detoxify it.

 

[MarshyRooster]

Yes, my brother said that she was probably in shock.
She was the only one who went into shock, fortunately. We did get pretty lucky when she was the only one affected, and she survived
My brother was the one who was figuring out the source water and ammonia and water conditioners. He found the right mix of water and good chemicals that he bought at the pond store, and everything pretty much went as planned. All the koi are doing well.
Do you know if the fish that were nudging Ever around were intentionally trying to help her?

 

[My2butterflies]

The nudging was from them trying to defensively huddle together. So, no. They were not trying to help their fellow fish mate out. Just stressed from being removed from the pond and having all their water changed out at once. You or your brother will need to watch your water parameters closely over the next few days to be sure you didn’t crash your cycle from removing too much good bacteria from the pond.

Ponds can be a bit of work, but are so wonderful And koi are such lovely swimming jewels I hope things go smoothly for you guys from here on out! Enjoy your pond!

 

[MarshyRooster]

Oh, that makes sense that they were just trying to huddle.
It's a good thing that they helped Ever out on accident, though
My brother was worried about removing too much bacteria too, so he used a couple healthy chemicals to replace it. Well, I think that's what he did.
Thank you!

 

[MarshyRooster]

Bad news...
So, I've been wondering why one of my koi hasn't been coming up to feed, but I thought that they just weren't hungry. Today my brother informed me that Bumble died . He said that when they were in the buckets, Bumble didn't have enough room since he was in there with another pretty big koi and since he couldn't move that well, he died. So that's unfortunate.

And one of our koi has a bloated eye- but the bloated eye is going back down and he's recovering. I think he'll be okay.

 

[DobieClose]

Bad news...
So, I've been wondering why one of my koi hasn't been coming up to feed, but I thought that they just weren't hungry. Today my brother informed me that Bumble died . He said that when they were in the buckets, Bumble didn't have enough room since he was in there with another pretty big koi and since he couldn't move that well, he died. So that's unfortunate.

And one of our koi has a bloated eye- but the bloated eye is going back down and he's recovering. I think he'll be okay.

We just moved and had to leave our beloved koi pond behind.
we would have a company, Pond Wizard in Central Ohio, come out and clean every spring. They had installed the pond too.
Anyhow. We really miss it and will hopefully have a new pond soon.
Our koi were pets who would eat from our hands. Lots of goldfish too. The goldfish were those feeder goldfish for 13 cents from the pet store. They grew to be big and beautiful.
is your pond natural or filtered?

 

[MarshyRooster]

Oh, I'm sorry you had to leave your koi pond!
The pond is filtered, I believe.

 

[DobieClose]

Oh, I'm sorry you had to leave your koi pond!
The pond is filtered, I believe.

Mine will also be filtered. I need it to be a little larger than the last because we had to rehome our largest koi in our old pond. I thought it was a little cramped for him.
not to mention the fact that our 18m old grandson wants to feed them all the time. Too much food in a smaller pond isn’t a good thing!
It was like 1000 gallons or a little more. Just big and deep enough for them to winter over.