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Quarantine
I can’t stress this enough. When our vet told us she quarantined her koi for a year, I thought she was a loon. Listen to the experts. This virus becomes most active at temperatures around 75 degrees. However 3% of infected koi display symptoms at lower temperatures. We quarantined our new arrivals 75 degrees. Consider this: We received the koi in February. The koi were in chilly water. When we brought the water temps up, the virus reared it’s ugly head.
This is why mass moralities seem to occur when pond water starts to warm up. When I told the dealer in Tennessee our dilemma, his comment to me was... “Wait till summer comes and the water starts to warm up. your going to see a lot more of this”
The latest thinking to Quarantining your new arrivals is:
1... Place a canary koi with the new koi. If your new koi has KHV, the canary koi will also contract the virus.
Canary’s we’re used in mines. They we’re lowered into the mine and if gasses we’re present the canary would die.
2... Warm the water to 75 degrees for a week and let it drop.
3... Do this repeatedly. The thinking behind this is to stress the koi and weaken his Immune system. Hopefully if the koi is infected the virus may break out.
The hope is if you don’t plan on doing a serology to your koi (which I highly recommend) you are hoping to draw out the virus in the koi in it’s stressed condition.
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