The fish keepers nighmare!!!

Well first off its not dropsy, dropsy affects odd individual fish not a whole pond at once.

The cause of this could be bad water, bad food, paraite infection or another outside contamenant, I would be inclined to get shot of every drop of pond water you have and replace it with fresh treated tap water, while you refill the pond put the fish in a temp pond with mix of malachite and fromalin @ 50/50 mix, again use treated tap water not water form the pond, this will help clean the outside of the fish of any parasite explosion which can be a cause, use plenty of oxygen through air stones too, plants should not be placed back in the pond until they have been through a thorough decomtamination also.

I have to say that if the fish have got as bad as that you must expect to lose some if not all, the pine cone effect normaly means kidneys are badly affected and that is often irreversable but not unheard of, but those not effected should be kept seperate from those that are and still treayed in the same way, this is as bad as it gets for any fish keeper, it only takes a few days to go from good to rotten, good luck.

Just to add a different perspective.. I can't help but think all the above might be a bit drastic and subject the fish to even more stress. You may also disrupt the mature filters with new water. What is the condition of the water? PH, Nitrites etc; is the filter clean? What are you treating with the malachite and formalin??? Could you do a scrape of the affected fish and examine under a microscope. Then treat for what you find instead of dosing with powerful chemicals in the hope that it's going to 'cure' whatever they may or may not have. Strange it's only affected the goldfish... is that significant? I seem to recall you had an experience with a neighbour contaminating your pond.. is that a possibilty again.. although as said before if only goldfish affected seems unlikely. Were these goldfish all from the same 'batch' of fish? Are they recent additions? Did whoever kept an eye on the pond add anything, or change anything?
As AJC says.. good luck, and keep us posted of ongoing developments

Update:-
I was feeling very upset last night because of all the hard work I have put into the pond and fish keeping only to think that all of my babies were going to die with nothing I could do to prevent this. Anyway, I have gone out today to have a look at the fish, and to my surprise no "floaters" and the fish that were visible all seemed perfectly well except for two that definately had the "pine cone" effect. Leading me to think that AJC has nailed it on the head that it isn`t dropsy but some sort of parisite. Also the fish didn`t seem as bloated so maybe the medifin has helped a little.
As for recent additions, alas no, all these fish are approx. 1 year old and have over-wintered in the pond which did kill off some of the weakest fish as you would expect. Exact pH levels and nitrate/ite levels to follow as I am going to clean my filter sponges out to try and clear the water as it seems a little murkier than normal, however a strip test showed levels to be normal with no high or abnormal readings. There is a slight chance that the fish may have been over fed in the last week, but not significantly, I suspect the worst that has happened is that uneaten food has been left on the surface rather than skimmed off after feeding, but even I do that from time to time. I will possibly add some pond salt later after filter cleaning as this could aid in warding off any further outbreaks. However, I feel a little happier today knowing that not all my fish have been hit by this disease.
Will update later, and thanks for your comments they have certainly eased my pounding heart.

Steve

Steve you still need to treat ALL the fish, if it is paraites they will be on the other fish too, so you need to irradicate all of them or it might blow up again, but you need to know your water is fine too, thats why i suggested a complete water change,n water test wont show an outside polutant thats got in the pond some how, the fact your ph, nitrite and ammonia are fine rules out those, so leaves parasite or outside polutant.

If you cant point a finger at a specific cause then you need to do a major water change to be sure, real pain it is but better than losing all your fish. polutants maybe undetectable, but treating with malachite and fromalin will sort out the any parasites.

just a thought, could the two goldfish be egg bound?

I know being egg bound would bloat the fish but would it raise the scales and bulge the eyes? As for complete water change, I have bought a new filter and uv to add extra filtration which I am going to install after another 50% water change today. I will probably repeat this on Saturday and Sunday so as to change all of the water but hopefully not cause too much shock to the healthy fish. Also added two good handfulls of pond salt. The problem I have with performing a full water change is that I have nowhere sufficient to hold the fish in the meantime whilst cleaning. The specialist in the aquatic centre said also that it was unlikely that the fish had dropsy and even more unlikely that it would be a contageous form of the disease, more like a bad water problem. Hence the new filtration system.
Filtration will be firstly through a bioforce 2200 (which I won`t clean) then through the new bioforce 4500 uv filter (which will act as a vacuum cleaner) then into my veggie filter at the top of my waterfall. Does this sound ok??

As for outside (neighbour) pollutant, it is doubtful as they are golfing in Spain.

Steve, I have had a goldfish with probably the same symptoms as yours. He has been like this for at least a couple of years now and is still swimming and eating as normal. I have two really fat Goldfish and they have been like this for a long time as well. I hope you will be able to stop worrying so much about it. You have done all you can. When you salted your pond did you think about the plants as they can be affected. They don't appreciate salt water.
Alison

How big is your pond and how much salt did you put in? The salt is a good idea I think but if you do add formalin at any point I have read it can kill if there is salt in the pond.

It sounds like overfeeding and food left in the water could have led to water quality problems. I would lay off fedding them for a few days, do a 50% water change and add salt to 0.3% to counteract nitrite problems. Also if you clean the old filter it might be a good idea to put some of the old filter media into the new filter and vice versa to help the bacteria colonize it quicker.

Glad to hear other fish have survived this, thanks Alison, I am beggining to feel a bit better about this whole situation. I have added salt before with no real efect on the water plants so I feel that I am probably safe in that respect. The little pine cones are swimming around happily as if nothing is the matter with them so I am keeping fingers crossed as you would expect. As for pond size, it is 750 litres and the amount of salt i put in was probably the same as third a tea cup so in reality not too much to harm but enough to promote osmosis or whatever it is called.
New filter has 50% of the older filter sponges and other media so that should help to balance them out a bit (thanks for that idea mark). Uv is switched on and now I am just waiting to see the water clear up. I have also raise the level of the pump slightly and also added about 2" more water to the pond just to be on the safe side of things.
As for medifin, when should I add more, I did have the instructions but alas I put them in a safe place so I didn`t lose them!!

After doing another water change and installing new filtration system I did a full pH and NH3/4 test. NH3/4 are 0ppm however pH has spiked to 8.9 which I believe to be rather too alkaline for the fish. Any ideas on what could have caused this or what to do to bring it back down to the 6.8 reading I had prior to treating with medifin, chlorifree. Is it the treatments that have caused the rise in alkalinity? I don`t want to be adding any chemicals if possible as I am trying to keep the pond as chemical free as possible.

That doesn't sound good. I'm guessing your water is around the pH 9 mark, which is fine as long as the fish are used to it. It sounds like the pH crashed in the pond before the water change.

Did another partial water change and the water now has a pH of 7.5. The two fish seem to be losing scales now as the coning seems to be gettting less but they are still very very bloated. Is this normal?

It's good that the pine coning is going away but the bloating is still not good. But it does sound like the water changes are helping soo only time will tell. Just keep it as clean as possible and keep a close eye on them. It's been so hot here I have been worrying about oxygen levels so make sure there's lots of circulation and airation in there.

Oh yeah forgot to say before, that really isn't much salt, not sure on the percentage you added but when i have to treat for something it's the best part of a 25kg sack going in. It does help them pull through and can be diluted with subsequent water changes.

Good luck.

Did my final water change today, pH down to 7.0 and all is well, the water is as clear as a nice gin and tonic, and the marsh marigolds could almost be the slice of lime cutting the surface upon the bubbles from the airstones. The pond looks better and clearer than ever.
If anyone can imagine what I felt like on Thursday evening on return from holiday, to find the fish showing all the signs of what is a life threatening disease, then they surely must have been in the same position at some time or other.
Well here is the end to the epic (I think):-
Tonight I went out to inspect the pond under torchlight and found the only two fish to have the coning effect sat together, on there own, in the top shallows. With a little persuasion, but not much, they entered my net, together, and allowed me to transport them to the nature pond at the bottom of the garden where they will both live together for the rest of their lives.
They both swam beneath the lilly pads, and disapeared under the iris.

It was nice to see.

Steve

Monitor your PH carefully for the next few days, 7.0 is a slide the wrong way! get it back to 7.5-8.0

Have just read this posting and agree with Alan - monitor your ph, it needs to be higher!
It sounds as if you have had a ph crash. Your original reading of 6.8 was too low!
Also please remember that clear water is not necessarily 'good' water

pH now 7.5 all levels are good. New koi called Etna introduced on Wednesday. All is well in top pond.
Just to let you know it is 3.50am on Sat 13th Aug and I have just removed the first goldfish that had I noticed had dropsy, it has died in peace, buried and resting.
Here is a timescale for you to work from.

Thanks once again to all

Steve