The other weekend we brought our koi into the garage. The weather is a little cooler now and there are leaves everywhere…keeping the koi outdoors would have been a pain. We have a friend from college who helped us bring in the koi. While Rob does not keep koi, he was very good with our little collection. The koi are in a 16 x 9 x 4 swimming pool in the middle of the garage. We placed the pool on top of some insulation boarding so that the liner is not sitting on concrete.

When we brought our koi in from the pond we noticed three koi with problems. A sanke that we had purchased in Chicago was showing signs of cold water pox. Apparently, when the water gets cold or a koi’s immune system is not strong, it will develop little pox spots. Some of my koi club members said that it’s very common and in warmer water, the pox spots just go away. Koi pox is really impossible to control and I’m sure all of my koi have been exposed. Nevertheless, this one koi seemed to be showing a lot of pox so I euthanized the little koi. I also had an asgai that was growing crookedly. Not sure if it was a tumor or something that we couldn’t see when it was younger but it was definitely looking rather lopsided. This little koi was also euthanized.  My last problem koi was one of the shiro utsuri tosai had a red rash looking area on his skin. I gave Sundance Kid a little shot of Amikacin and quarantined for about a week. Happy to report that we put Sundance into the big pool with everyone else last night.

An interesting thing about Sundance is watching the sumi come and go. Sundance arrived with plenty of sumi that disappeared in a few weeks. He/she looked mostly white all summer. As the weather and water cooled, the sumi spots are coming up. Wild Bill is also showing more sumi spots under his/her skin.

Here’s the crew that ended up in winter quarters (video length 4:19)