Dropsy

In a Nifurpirinol treatment
baktopur direct

I was going to give up, and then I went online one more time and googled "Dropsy" and "Hydropisie". I found just enough hope not to go get larger Ziploc bags and prepare myself to euthanize my koi in the freezer.

One site I had not read yet said:

My heart goes out to any koi or goldfish I see that has dropsy. It's such a nasty infection and almost always fatal. It's basically an infection of an internal organ, often the kidney. The fish is no longer able to process its fluids. They build up inside the fish causing the tell-tell [sic] signs of bloat. You could probably wquate the effect it has on the fish to the effect kidney failure has on us.

There's very little we can do to help a fish in the advanced stages of dropsy. We can, however, do things to help prevent it [great] and treat the fish we suspect could have early stages of it.

Well, that cheered me right up. About as effective as thinking of the bac results being available tomorrow. I read on, listlessly.

What makes dropsy so hard to diagnose in time to treat it is that the symptoms that we know as dropsy do not come out until the fish has entered the final stages of the disease. The fish literally blows up like a balloon. Its scales stick out, making the fish resemble a pinecone [sic]. In fact, dropsy is often called Pinecone [sic] Disease because of it. The eyes will bulge out from the trapped fluids beneath.

Dropsy is also often accompanied by external bacterial infections including fin rot, mouth rot and ulcers. In some cases I've seen almost any and all symptoms. It's really a sad sight to see.

There was a picture of a dead koi, lying on its side, a sort of medical tool lifting one of its raised scales.

My eyes continued scanning the page.

What was the point? My koi might not have ulcers or enlarged blood vessels, but it definitely has raised scales, even if it doesn't look like a cartoon of a koi that has breathed in the air from a balloon it was blowing up.

I have a bad habit of giving up when I hear the symptoms of dropsy described to me by a customer [Hunh? He had my attention]. I will always say that there's really nothing they can do for it [Oh] -- just to make it comfortable and let it live out its short life in a stress-free environment [well, that's not the Ziploc bag in the freezer, anyway]. I was happily reminded [Hunh? What's that?] just this spring that every now and then a fish actually survives dropsy -- even after it has swollen up from it [Smile!].

And ours isn't that swollen. Yet.

The treatment regimen [All eyes here] that worked on the lucky koi who survived this year was feeding it triple antibiotic food and keeping him in .3% non-iodized salt. This was such a no-nonsense approach and so basically simple! The triple antibiotic food kept the internal infection at bay while the salt prevented water from seeping into the sores or skin of the koi and keeping his protective slime coat intact.

That leads me to believe that there is hope for a koi or goldfish who has dropsy as long as the fish is still eating [Oh].

I hopped in the car and headed to Truffaut. The young woman has helped me before, and she told me the bacterial tablets I had picked up wouldn't work, even though I had read the notice, and it did mention the symptoms of dropsy and treatment, and showed me to shelves with the big bags of non-idodized sea salt. I put the tablets back and went to the cash register, feeling a little regretful.

I drove over to Jardin de France and looked for and found the tablets, picked out a pair of natural rubber garden clogs, some sock things that prevent human fungal infections or keep your feet warm in cold-weather gardening, looked at expensive cat litter boxes, tried on a few more straw hats, exercised some self-control and left them in the store and went to pay.

I drove home, hitting a bird of some type that was sitting on the road. I backed up, trying not to do the same to two kids on bikes, whose grandfather and younger sibling were watching from father up the road, and got out of the car. The wings flapped, the dog in the garden on the other side of the link fence came charging up, barking, and the grandfather looked at me -- oddly. I smiled -- forcedly. The bird folded its wings. Everyone peddled on by, the dog kept going crazy, and I started to reach down, uncertain what exactly to do, when it spread its wings and lifted at an unnatural angle into the sky, trailing a broken rear leg behind it, and disappeared into the branches of a tree across the street. I returned to my car and drove the last two kilometers, trying to not damage anything else.

The koi has had a 30 minute bath in the dissolved Nifurpirinol (antibiotic that is easily absorbed through the skin) "baktopur direct" tablet, over which Baccarat and I presided, and which it seemed not to dislike, and returned it to 60 liters of basin water with 280 grams of dissolved sea salt and two élodée (or elodea) plants for oxygen and company, and sat back on my heels with Baccarat to watch it.

It swam around more than it did in the malachite green solution.

It is not particularly interested in eating, although it did eat one koi stick at the beginning of its Nifupirinol treatment, but it has been moved about so much.

I have emailed a company in the US to see if they will mail their antibiotic food, not available in the UK and France, which has been said to have some success with dropsy, here.

Dare I call the vet to see about antibiotics?
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Update May 28, 2012: Over time, many people have read this page, and I thought it might be a good idea to add that as of this date, this carp koi is healthy, growing and in all ways thriving. I went back to the garden store to tell the young man who suggested I put it in a plastic bag in the freeze to end its life gently that my treatment worked, and he was on third interested, one third probably trying to remember who I was (despite my accent), and one third-distracted.