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Dec 2000 Selected Articles |
President's Corner - President |
Office of Sec. - Anne |
From the Veep's Corner by Jim |
What Do You Know? by Jan Brown |
Delayed Mortality Syndrome by Aqua-Doc |
Presidents Corner: Greetings Everyone
This has certainly been an exciting year, and has passed quickly. I hope that everyone will attempt to attend the Christmas Party in order to vote for next years Board Members.I have really enjoyed holding a position over the past three years, but have decided that it is time for me to take a break. I will of course continue to be an active part of the club for the events we hold each year.
I have certainly appreciated all the help that I have received during this year. We have a great group of people and I look forward to the club continuing to grow. I especially want to say Thank You to Jim Roberts who has donated a lot of time and money to the club.
I'd also like to thank Kay Collins, Nanette Anderson and Betty Muehe for their help on the welcome table during the day. Cindy Dean was also a great help taking pictures, running errands, and setting up the trophy table for the banquet. And to all of the members who have volunteered during the year Thank You, your participation is what makes our events so successful.
I'd like to wish all of our members a safe and happy Holiday Season! I look forward to seeing you at the Christmas Party!
Merry Christmas, Charlie
Office of the Secretary by: Anne
Our November fish show was the best one I have attended. We had
a truly great day Saturday; the temperature was perfect, and no rain! We had excellent
vendors; we even had a food vender this year. Volunteers were plentiful, which helped the
day go smoothly. I think everyone who attended had a great time, especially at the
banquet!
The Judges were very helpful to all, including Debbie Hester- our second judge's wife and
a Koi judge in her own right. They even volunteered and helped to categorize the show
fish!
I hope to see everyone at our Christmas Party, don't forget that this is the meeting when
we elect our new board members. You must be present to vote. H
Hello Everybody; It’s hard to believe that the time has come for us to be thinking about the year 2001. This past year has been such a blur, I can’t say that I remember much about it, except that it was extremely busy!
To start, I’d like to express my thanks to everyone who made the last year go by as smoothly as it did, even through a few bumps in the road. We have such a great group of people that make up the North Florida Koi Club.
Throughout the year many members have continuously given of their time and effort by opening their homes for meetings, transporting supplies, giving demonstrations, etc. These things add up to make us such a great club.
Our fall show in November, as well as the banquet afterwards, were a big success because of all the people willing to help. Our great set up and break down crew: Robert, Sam, Chuck, Ann, Terry Tracy, Cindy, Connie, Gordon, Tolson, Todo, Sherry, Dave,. Tim, Tina and Pat worked hard and made it enjoyable for me to have their help. I’d like to thank Fred also for allowing me to "volunteer" him at the last minute to be the judge’s statistician. Todo took care of the publicity, getting out the word to the press and media that brought us two newspaper articles and a TV interview. Jan and Ann took care of organizing the banquet and transporting the judges. We could not have had such a great show or awards banquet without even one of these people. And once again, Charlie pulled the whole thing together with endless calls and faxes to get the numerous raffle items, as well as making the fantastic trophies. I feel extremely lucky to have shared this job with each of you. Thank you again. Jim
What Do You Know? Or, You Never Know What Will Happen If You Let The Treasurer Think.
At the recent Fall Fish Show I heard an interested but apprehensive prospective member say, "Oh, but I don’t know anything about koi." The more I thought about it, the more I wondered, yes, but what else do you know? A club like ours is a grand mixture of personalities and talents with one uniting interest…fish. Everybody brings a little something else interesting to the table.
When I joined, I was interested in keeping my koi happy and healthy. The club has done that for me. By now, I can’t claim total ignorance about koi, because even if you aren’t trying, you eventually learn by listening and looking. However, I will never be a koi expert, I am simply not that interested. I know a kohoku from a sanke and how to spot pond problems, but other members can tell you my eyes glaze over when the experts start mono, moyo and mujuing. And that’s o.k. The club did not need another "koi expert" when I joined, and probably could do very well for quite some time with the ones we have. What the club did get was a member who knew something about plants…you know, those green things that sometimes block the view of your fish.
That led me to wonder what non-koi knowledge is stored in the heads of our membership. I look at the membership list and realize that we are now so large that I can’t put faces to some members, much less identify talent and skills. I hope that the lack of koi knowledge will never keep a member from volunteering to do what they do well. Recently, one of our newer members, David Abraham, who is a lawyer was invaluable serving on the Bylaw Revision Committee. His knowledge of what we could and could not do saved countless hours and eliminated the need for numerous meetings. Tina Stogsdill revealed an unknown talent for fundraising by suggesting and running a plant stand at the Fall Fish Show. This netted the club over $175.00 of pure profit and was done without a single mention of koi. Shirley Stone stepped in and served as Pond Tour photographer. Charlie Gardner and Fred Lieb are masters at convincing businesses to donate items for club raffles and auctions. The list goes on and on and none of these skills have anything to do directly with koi.
This club has room for anyone interested in koi and a member should never let lack of knowledge keep them from participating. Nanette Anderson, a member who is so new that the ink is hardly dry on her membership form, volunteered to help with the Fish Show. She hasn’t yet bought her first koi, but I already know she is enthusiastic and reliable and we’d be blessed if we had a dozen more like her.
Our membership list is like hidden treasure. Club officers and committee chairmen never know when they’ll find a hidden talent in an unexpected place. So when volunteers are needed, pick something you can do and jump right in. Don’t be intimidated, you already know more than you think you do about koi anyway….belly up is bad, right?
"Delayed Mortality Syndrome" is a disease in which the fish becomes subject to illness and even death following a move to another environment. It is a disease well known and very familiar to the fish shipping industry. Netting, renetting, shipping, moving, acclimation to different water quality: ie: temperature, pH and levels of toxins and treatments all play a part in the stress and injury of a fish even before it meets it’s final destination. The final destination in this case will be your pond or HOPEFULLY your quarantine tank.
Many fish transport well, or may seem to have at first. Unfortunately more than 80% of all fish moved will notshow signs of a problem until more than a week to a month later. This is the delayed response.
Think of it in relation to ourselves to better understand the element of stress. If you or I were in a traumatic car crash and were not seriously hurt... we can most times walk away and think we skated off without injury; at first... The next day roles around and how do we feel in the morning, quite sore eh? Many times, even a week later, we feel even worse than the day after. A spinal injury can take from months to years to present itself. So the delayed response can be a reality.
Sometimes even when we follow all the necessary steps to avoid disaster when we receive a new fish, the outcome can be a poor one. In most cases this isn’t the case but when it happens you can usually attribute it to a handling problem on the other end or a genetic weakness. This is the unfortunate Mortality syndrome part of the deal.
So how can we prepare for this, and avoid as much as possible the worst cast scenario?
1) Set up a quarantine area for all new arrivals
2) ACCLIMATE new fish properly keeping in mind the most important, pH and Temperature
3) Longer quarantine periods (6-8 weeks in the minimum recommended)
4) Have a plan to treat for the most common parasites while fish is in quarantine
5) Don’t be over anxious and impatient to see them in your pond
For most of us, our heart is wrapped up in our pond and our fish are part of our family. So...one fish is usually not worth the gamble of everyone else’s life in your pond. Aqua-Doc from What’s up Doc.
President's Corner - President |
Office of Sec. - Anne |
From the Veep's Corner by Jim |
What Do You Know? by Jan Brown |
Delayed Mortality Syndrome by Aqua-Doc |