thesanchelope

I yanked a rainbow trout out of my pond today after I found another one floating. The dead trout had no noticeable lesions or trauma.....he was just pretty dead.
The trout I netted has some serious signs of decay on his caudal fin, and both pectoral fins are white as snow. The top of his head also looks affected by whatever this is. His caudal fin is eaten away almost to lateral line, so I'm not sure about the recovery.....he does seem fairly active (took me 20 minutes to net the little bugger) and none of the other fish have his symptoms. Temp was at 55, ph 8, NH3 and NO2 both at about .25.....which is a spike from yesterday. So he's chillin in a quarantine right now, no medication yet.....thinking about just melafix-ing him, but I was hoping for a second opinion. If you want pics I can try to get them.....but netting him is a pain in the arse.

Thanks for the help,
Tom

Jay

The bio dynamics are a little different in a POND as opposed to a hobby aquarium. My guess would be a bacterial problem of some kind. I would treat with food containing a broad spectrum antibiotic like erythromycin or tetracycline. Ten days to two weeks should produce positive results. You might want to check with your local wildlife, Ag dept. guys to see if this is common in local ponds.

Jay

__________________
High Tech & Heavily Planted

thesanchelope

Thanks Jay.....I wanna wait a while to see if other fish start showing those symptoms in the pond before I start medicating (because I hate doing it.) But I'll probably pick some of that up and drop it in the QT and see if the Zombie trout recovers a little. I am a little confused though, it's been about 4 hours since I dropped him in that quarantine and already the white color has left his fins.....he's still torn up pretty bad on the caudal, and his left pectoral is pretty much shredded....but like I said, he's remained fairly active. I was considering if maybe he's just on the very bottom of some kind of trout pecking order....but that doesn't seem too likely to me that they would single out just one fish.