I tried to scrape this off with my fingers, but no luck. I've dealt with ick before and recognize it, but perhaps this is what an advanced case looks like? My water parans are good, but I introduced some water hyacinths recently and two days later noticed these gel like tapioca sized growths on three of my butterfly koi's tail fins. I've never seen anything like it before. I've kept a 2-3% salt level in the pond lately, but did a big spring cleaning a couple of weeks ago and basically I'm cycling the pond again. Not long after I did the initial cleaning, my large comet looked like he had been sprinkled with cracked pepper. I don't have a microscope, but hand cleaning didn't rub anything off and it didn't look like a parasite. The scale was just black. The salt seemed to do the trick though and he lost the black spots a few days later. I thought perhaps it was the healing from ammonia burn, but its been several months since I had a problem with ammonia. Anyways, its been a little rough lately worrying about some parasite or other, and none of my koi suppliers seem to have heard of a black spot problem not associated with ammonia burn, nor do they seem knowledgable about this current sickness. Any body ever run into this before?
Thanks!

You know what wonders me, Ponderosa? When you did the spring cleaning, that could very well be the reason for the black spots - ammonia during the new cycling process. You mentioned it only be a couple of weeks since the cleaning. How exactly did you clean? Getting rid of the mulm on the pond bottom? Huge filter cleaning, replacing some things?
Are those new growths on your koi also black, or whitish, more like a wart?

Do not know what is going on with our goldfish, unless gold fish can get the little black spots because of the hard water like kohaku koi can?

Your butterfly koi, I believe, have carp pox. It is not fatale. Here is a link to bonniesplants on carp pox so you understand what you are dealing with.

http://www.bonniesplants.com/sick_injured_...ox/carp_pox.htm

Dr. Johnson in his book "Koi Health and Disease" says not to scrape it off to leave it alone. It will go away. I had a butterfly that had it for three years and was always healthy.




Does anyone know what happened to koivet.com? I am unable to access it.


Scott

Thank you so much for the responses - I especially found the carp pox photo helpful. I believe you are right - that is what my koi's fins look like. I'm relieved its not something fatal and hopefully the salt treatment will repair them soon. I live in Florida and the weather is typically warm right now (about 80 degrees) so I'm not sure how they got a cold water virus, but the photos don't lie!

As to the cleaning: I saw some black spots on my comet and read up on it, but couldn't find anything definitive. I'd been testing my water twice a week for months, and knew I hadn't had a problem with ammonia for 4 months. My fish showed no signs of illness during that time besides laying on the bottom. After the ammonia was under control I saw no black spots (burns). Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed some on my comet so I decided it was time to do a through cleaning of the pond, so I drained it and cleaned all sludge from the bottom by hand, but left the bio filter intact. I refilled with pump water and returned my fish to the pond. Two days later my fish seemed even more peppered than ever, but after a week, the pepper spots were gone and it just looks like white skin where they used to be. The fish acts very healthy. I noticed my ph was very low (about 6.8) and added some baking soda to bring it up to 7.6. Then a week later I added the water hyacinths, and two days later noticed the carp pox.
I too tried to access the koivet.com site and it is down.
I will continue to read up on Carp pox - but thanks so much for putting me on the right path to that disease. I don't have any experienced fisheries around me and rely on this site because of all the experience here!
thanks again,
PONDerosa