Nov 2002 20th Anniversary Year Selected Articles

Email Todo

Map to Next Meeting

From the President to the N. F.K C. Members: 

We sure had a great meeting at the Robinson’ this past month. I would like to say thank you to Mary and Chris Robinson for hosting the meeting. I also want to thank Jan and Todo for the discussions on plant hardiness and Koi catching and transporting of Koi. Our show is getting closer now so I hope everyone has planned on attending the show on the 16^th & 17^th of this month. I assure you this is going to be a huge event with speakers such as Dr. Allen C. Riggs, DVM, MS. Dr. Riggs is a Koi Doctor, among other fields of Veterinary medicine. Dr. Riggs will lecture about water chemistry and Koi identification. Dr. Riggs will also have a second lecture where the audience can ask questions to him about Koi health. We will have other speakers as well with such topics as To plant or not to plant, Koi culling what you look for, and others. Rod Lawton has done a wonderful job with Vendors for the show. If you can’t find what you are looking for at this show than they probably don’t make it. Rod also has been generating donations for the raffle and I must say they are looking fantastic. So be sure to come to the show and by all means show your Koi. We have added 3 more categories witch has generated 3 more First place awards and ribbons. Also 3 categories of Long Fin witch also added 3 more awards. So as you can tell the show is larger and more giving than in past years. There will be a total of 48 ribbons and over 16 awards given out this show. So I hope everyone shows their Koi and has a wonderful time doing it. I know I will!! This meeting we will have bags for sale for transporting your Koi. We will be discussing the show and any concerns there might be. Jim Roberts and his Co Chairs have done a great job in assuring the safety of our Koi and the show it self. This meeting will also be the last chance you have for entering your Koi in the show. Hopefully you have already done so but if not this will be the time to do so. The banquet will be Saturday night as usual at a happy hour of 6:30pm and the dinner starting at 7:30pm at witch time after dinner the awards will be presented. This dinner will be a real treat as all the food will be fresh and cooked on site by a professional Chef. As you can tell I’m excited about the show more so than any other before. With all the volunteers and the show organizers this is what makes a club work. I am proud to be part of such a group of club members and I want to thank everyone for all the help now and in the future. This Saturday the 9^th our club will have a booth at the Pet Expo held at the Jacksonville Fair grounds starting at 8am to 5pm. Please let, your friends know about both shows. So we can get the word out about this wonderful club we are all members of. Till we meet again, Tim Gasson President NFKC 2002

 Secretary's   Report By Todo 29 members at last meeting.

Jan Brown presented a section on plants in winter and Todo had a few words about caring for koi in winter and how to bag your fish for the trip to the show.

Dead Fish, Handle Properly   By Sandee Todorsky

A few days ago we ended up with some fish that we felt were beyond the help of quarantine and injections. These fish (there were two) had huge growths on their heads covering one side of the head. The fish were both yellow in color and the growths were like a port-wine stain that is seen on humans sometimes. But these growths had the appearance of a cluster of rough berries. We had never seen anything like it. There were lesions on the tail and dorsal fins that looked like Carp Pox, but even that was questionable.

I got online and tried to find something that would give me a clue as to what we were dealing with. I found all kinds of diseases, but none of the pictures that were available were anything like what we were dealing with in person. I looked at 15+ sites. So I did a fair amount of research trying to find something to help.

During my search, the fish were getting worse. Rather than take a chance on letting these fish infect others we had in quarantine, or even foul the water as they rolled over, the fish went into a bag of pond water and into the freezer. Time and funds were short, so we did the most humane thing we could.

It wasn’t until the fish were already in the freezer that I thought of contacting Allen Riggs at the college of veterinary medicine at the University of Florida. Allen had run the wet lab for anyone who signed up at AFKAPS this past March and had given seminars at previous AFKAPS. The fish had already been put down in a humane manner. But I thought these growths might be interesting to Veterinary Students. Allen thought they also might have been interesting for his students, but they were not usable after being frozen. So this was a real learning experience for us.

I contacted Allen Riggs via e-mail (RiggsA@mail.vetmed.ufl.edu). His response was very interesting. So I thought I would share it in case anyone else finds themselves in the same position and would want to either donate fish or actually find out what their growths are.

Allen’s reply: ....it sounds like some form of neoplasia, which would make an interesting case/slide for histopath, but unfortunately once the tissue is frozen the ice crystals cause artifacts which renders the subtle histological characteristics often necessary to make the diagnosis unreadable. If you get something like that in the future, after euthanizing the fish excise the mass out and put in a 10% buffered formalin at a 10:1 ratio of formalin:mass...with the mass scored so the formalin can penetrate easily (ie breadloaf slice it about 1/4") ...this will allow the formalin to easily penetrate into the slices from both sides and properly fix the tissue until we can get together and get a slide cut and stained.

Had we had this information before we euthanized these fish, we could have made a donation which may have helped us in the future. Having the information on what exactly is needed to be able to properly diagnose any problem is something to have in reference and waiting rather than information you scramble to get on a moment’s notice.