The Eye of Keybo
This is part one of what happened to Keybo.
Sometime in late Winter or very early Spring we noticed that Keybo no longer had a right eye. That's right. His right eye was gone. Vanished. Unfortunately, other than my video camera—which takes crappy stills—I didn't have any way to capture this, so I have no pictures of Keybo's missing eye. But all that was left of where his right eye used to be was a small hole. Other than that, there was no sign of any kind of trauma. No torn flesh. No visible scars. Nothing. Other than the small hole—which is where I imagine the optic nerve from his former eye used to come through from his skull—it was just fleshy, with his normal colored flesh, and it just looked liked he had never had an eye there, but he had.
Strange.
No. Very strange.
However, other than missing an eye and being obviously blind on his right side, Keybo's behavior in the pond appeared normal. Until about mid-May.
Though he was the biggest fish in the pond (after Nabu, who I haven't told you about yet) Keybo was the most shy. Usually when I approached the pond he would casually swim away. If the other fish approached he would join them, but keep his eye(s) hidden below them.
Sometime in mid or late May I walked up to the pond, and there was Keybo, sort of hanging on in one "corner" next to a plant basket. He didn't swim away as I approached, and he was hardly moving at all except for very slow gill and fin movement, to keep himself in place. His good eye was also tracking me as I moved about the pond.
Not good. It's never good when Koi isolate themselves from the others. They (the ones in the Buddha Pond at least) are generally pretty sociable and like to hang with each other. When fish isolate themselves it's usually a bad sign that indicates something is terribly wrong with them. Not only was Keybo keeping his distance from the others, but the fact that he was letting me stand there and look at him was not his typical behavior.
Then I moved over to where I could take a look at his blind side. I was horrified! It was all black and red and looked like your classic "black eye." Seriously. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought that Keybo was sneaking out of the Buddha Pond at night and getting into bar fights.
I dropped what I was doing and starting testing the pond. Pond Mojo was gone! Ammonia levels were somewhere between 1 and 2 ppm, while Nitrites were at or over 5 ppm—which the top of the chart! Both of those measurements were off the charts as far as I was concerned, since, according to previous testing results, I'd been able to keep them consistently at ZERO for 4 years or more. The water looked clean and crystal clear. Obviously that in itself doesn't mean a whole lot. I've seen times when the water looks murky, especially in the Fall, when leaves get in and settle in the pond, but even at those worst looking times, when I tested, Ammonia and Nitrites were ZERO.
So I changed the water in the pond. More than 50%. That is, I pumped out at least half of it, refilled the pond to full, then pumped that out about 1/3rd. Whereas PH can be adjusted virtually instantaneously with additives (citric acid or baking soda), there's not a lot you can do to instantly rid a pond of Ammonia and Nitrites. Water changing helps drastically, but it won't get those levels back down to zero instantly or even overnight. You need the whole bio-filter, beneficial bacteria and Pond Mojo mechanics going again to those numbers to ZERO. After you change the water you have to re-salt the pond (yes, even fresh water fish need salt in the water to keep them slimy, which is good for their health) and, for our pond, rebalance the PH.
Afterwards I became super-diligent about monitoring the pond everyday for the next week or so. I also monitored Keybo several times a day. He was definitely improving, though I wouldn't say he ever became normal again. But he did get out of that corner and was spending more time with the other fish and he resumed being afraid of me. If I wanted to get a good look at his eye I had to sneak up on that blind side.
It's usually hard to get a good look, but, after only a few days, the discoloration of his missing eye was way improved, but not gone. Then, oddly, I noticed something even stranger about it. It vaguely looked like his eye was reforming. At first I convinced myself it was an optical illusion of sorts, but a few days later, with the discoloration all but completely gone, I was certain. His eye was coming back!
Whether it was ever really gone or had somehow sunken back into his skull, I'll never know. The end of May was when I bought my Pentax K10D and started taking frequent pictures of the Buddha Pond and its residents. It came in particularly hand for examing Keybo, since he is too afraid of me to let me get a good look at him. If I could at least occasionally capture of decent photo of him, I could examine it all day long on my computer. The problem was capturing a decent picture, because Keybo was so afraid of me and stayed low in the water, below the distorting ripples. By June 11 I had a decent enough image of both sides of Keybo to compare his two sides.
Keybo's formerly missing right eye (shown on the right) was beginning to be visible, but it still looked different and more sunken in that his left eye (shown on the left.) Then I got smart on June 15th and turned off the pump and caught some undistorted pictures.
This image is a full-screen snapshot taken while I examined a photo of Keybo using Apple's Aperture. There was still a visible redness, but his right eye had, indeed, returned.
Meanwhile, I continued to monitor the pond and Keybo and the other fish. Keybo was still spending more time than usual by himself, but appeared to be making a full come-back.
Three days later he was dead.
(to be continued)
Sometime in late Winter or very early Spring we noticed that Keybo no longer had a right eye. That's right. His right eye was gone. Vanished. Unfortunately, other than my video camera—which takes crappy stills—I didn't have any way to capture this, so I have no pictures of Keybo's missing eye. But all that was left of where his right eye used to be was a small hole. Other than that, there was no sign of any kind of trauma. No torn flesh. No visible scars. Nothing. Other than the small hole—which is where I imagine the optic nerve from his former eye used to come through from his skull—it was just fleshy, with his normal colored flesh, and it just looked liked he had never had an eye there, but he had.
Strange.
No. Very strange.
However, other than missing an eye and being obviously blind on his right side, Keybo's behavior in the pond appeared normal. Until about mid-May.
Though he was the biggest fish in the pond (after Nabu, who I haven't told you about yet) Keybo was the most shy. Usually when I approached the pond he would casually swim away. If the other fish approached he would join them, but keep his eye(s) hidden below them.
Sometime in mid or late May I walked up to the pond, and there was Keybo, sort of hanging on in one "corner" next to a plant basket. He didn't swim away as I approached, and he was hardly moving at all except for very slow gill and fin movement, to keep himself in place. His good eye was also tracking me as I moved about the pond.
Not good. It's never good when Koi isolate themselves from the others. They (the ones in the Buddha Pond at least) are generally pretty sociable and like to hang with each other. When fish isolate themselves it's usually a bad sign that indicates something is terribly wrong with them. Not only was Keybo keeping his distance from the others, but the fact that he was letting me stand there and look at him was not his typical behavior.
Then I moved over to where I could take a look at his blind side. I was horrified! It was all black and red and looked like your classic "black eye." Seriously. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought that Keybo was sneaking out of the Buddha Pond at night and getting into bar fights.
I dropped what I was doing and starting testing the pond. Pond Mojo was gone! Ammonia levels were somewhere between 1 and 2 ppm, while Nitrites were at or over 5 ppm—which the top of the chart! Both of those measurements were off the charts as far as I was concerned, since, according to previous testing results, I'd been able to keep them consistently at ZERO for 4 years or more. The water looked clean and crystal clear. Obviously that in itself doesn't mean a whole lot. I've seen times when the water looks murky, especially in the Fall, when leaves get in and settle in the pond, but even at those worst looking times, when I tested, Ammonia and Nitrites were ZERO.
So I changed the water in the pond. More than 50%. That is, I pumped out at least half of it, refilled the pond to full, then pumped that out about 1/3rd. Whereas PH can be adjusted virtually instantaneously with additives (citric acid or baking soda), there's not a lot you can do to instantly rid a pond of Ammonia and Nitrites. Water changing helps drastically, but it won't get those levels back down to zero instantly or even overnight. You need the whole bio-filter, beneficial bacteria and Pond Mojo mechanics going again to those numbers to ZERO. After you change the water you have to re-salt the pond (yes, even fresh water fish need salt in the water to keep them slimy, which is good for their health) and, for our pond, rebalance the PH.
Afterwards I became super-diligent about monitoring the pond everyday for the next week or so. I also monitored Keybo several times a day. He was definitely improving, though I wouldn't say he ever became normal again. But he did get out of that corner and was spending more time with the other fish and he resumed being afraid of me. If I wanted to get a good look at his eye I had to sneak up on that blind side.
It's usually hard to get a good look, but, after only a few days, the discoloration of his missing eye was way improved, but not gone. Then, oddly, I noticed something even stranger about it. It vaguely looked like his eye was reforming. At first I convinced myself it was an optical illusion of sorts, but a few days later, with the discoloration all but completely gone, I was certain. His eye was coming back!
Whether it was ever really gone or had somehow sunken back into his skull, I'll never know. The end of May was when I bought my Pentax K10D and started taking frequent pictures of the Buddha Pond and its residents. It came in particularly hand for examing Keybo, since he is too afraid of me to let me get a good look at him. If I could at least occasionally capture of decent photo of him, I could examine it all day long on my computer. The problem was capturing a decent picture, because Keybo was so afraid of me and stayed low in the water, below the distorting ripples. By June 11 I had a decent enough image of both sides of Keybo to compare his two sides.
Keybo's formerly missing right eye (shown on the right) was beginning to be visible, but it still looked different and more sunken in that his left eye (shown on the left.) Then I got smart on June 15th and turned off the pump and caught some undistorted pictures.
This image is a full-screen snapshot taken while I examined a photo of Keybo using Apple's Aperture. There was still a visible redness, but his right eye had, indeed, returned.Meanwhile, I continued to monitor the pond and Keybo and the other fish. Keybo was still spending more time than usual by himself, but appeared to be making a full come-back.
Three days later he was dead.
(to be continued)
Labels: Ammonia, Apple Aperture, Keybo, Koi, Nitrites, Pond Mojo
posted by Bryrock at
1:33 PM
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