Hello everyone. My husband and I left for three days in Atlantic City for a long awaited vacation. My yard was in good shape and my pond was perfect. Fish were fine and I had no problems. On the second day of vacation, my husband has a blackberry on his belt, and my son (age 27) gives him a 911 - SOS - Call home. He never does this unless emergency, so being parents of 3 and grandparents of 2, we figured something bad had happened to someone in the family. We just didn't know who. We called my son back and he said "I'm sorry mom, but when I got home from work, three of your fish were dead and the baby
(Nemo) was floating sideways, almost dead.

He told us he washed off the surviving three fish and filled tanks I had in the basement with water. The reason he 911'd us is he could not find the bottle that takes the clorine out of the water. I told him where it was. Here I am on vacation and all I can do is worry about the fish. My son did the best he could, but the next day, Nemo died. When we got home on Sunday, the remaining three fish were still alive. As it turns out, they were the original three fish that I started with (KING, JACK-O AND PRINCESS). This was their 4th summer. King did not look too good, only one fin was working, and he seemed to have lost some balance.
My son said that the pond water, and the fish were covered with a creamy slime.
What caused this????????Who knows? We have cleaned out the pond and everything is running again. The three fish are in the pond and King seems alittle better. I hope they make it. Keep your fingers crossed.

It sounds like a Ph crash to me....... being covered with the white film is a dead ringer. I hope everyone makes it ok.

I'm sorry this happened. What a way to end a well needed vacation. . I can only imagine how your stomach must have felt when you got a 911 SOS call from home. How scary!

I'm glad your son was able to save some of your fish and sad for the ones you loss.

I'm going with the PH crash also.How sad that was-especially hearing the news while on vacation.
Another thing that will cause all that slime coat is Parasites.Did you introduce anything new into the pond?
Anyway,What are your normal readings on this pond including PH,etc? Did you test to see what they were when you got home?Once again,I'm really sorry.

From what I understand Crushed coral (and 10% water changes once a week) will help prevent pH crash. I know this info is a little late. We can all learn from it though. Very sorry for you loss, what a horrible way to end a vacation.

Here is a great article from Koivet.com on pH crashes. So if anyone is wondering about this topic here is a source for you.

http://koivet.com/html/articles/articles_d...Water%20Quality

More on pH from Koivet.com

http://koivet.com/html/articles/articles_d...Water%20Quality


http://koivet.com/html/articles/articles_d...Water%20Quality

This same thing happened to me last summer...

I had some duck weed in a bucket nest to the pond and was putting in a hand full every day or so for the fish to eat.

One day the plants must have been cooked a little from the hot temperatures and when i put the plants in for the goldies they reacted violently to them and got all covered with think milky slime that sufficated 9 in minutes. I was able to pull two out and put them in a rubermaid tub I was keeping extra water in. And the slime sluffed right off.

Dont know if something like this happened to you it just reminded me of what happened when you described your situation.

Sorry for your loss.

Demi

Thanks so much for all your support. So far, everything looks good for my remaining fish. Big King looks like he's getting better every day. I was lucky not to lose all of them. Scott, thanks for the KoiVet articles, they were very helpful.
I knew about the 10% water removal every week, but I did not know about baking soda bringing PH up quickly. Thank god for this forum. I haven't seen any more "salamanders" but if I do, I'll let you know. Blondie