April Next Meeting. PRESIDENT S MESSAGE Marilee Marshall. April 26, 2009 at 1:00pm. Home of Duane & Melody Carlson

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1 April 2009 PRESIDENT S MESSAGE Marilee Marshall More sun than rain. Koi eagerly greeting me again with mouths wide open. Foam in the skimmer. SPRING! I see traces of string algae, and I m increasing the circulation rate to full throttle. The pond water has been cloudy brown from the sediment washed into the NID water. I cringe at what other unpleasant things come in with my irrigation water. The potential damage due to parasites will become more evident as the water temperature comes up; also knows as Aeromonas alley temps between degrees when parasite damage turns into bacterial infections while the fish immunity is still weak. I really need to set up the drip system our KHA (Koi Health Advisor) Head Honcho Jerry Kyle recommended. I ll have it drip through a small UV light constantly and sterilize the critters before they ever reach the pond water system. YES!! Which brings to mind, in case you haven t heard, Jerry has been named KHA Public Relations Director or Head Honcho by the national AKCA KHA Program at the SD Seminar. Congratulations Jerry! What a rich resource you are for our very own club. Inside this issue: Pres. Message 1 March Meeting Pics 2 Announcements 3 Call for KHA s 4 Classifieds 5 BOD Minutes 6 Spring Tales Club Calendar This month we need to nominate our Koi Person of the Year. Ellen is ing a nomination message, and we d love to see your input. We can vote on the candidates at the next club meeting. See you all at the next meeting when you pick up your $10 tategoi for the fish growth contest. You ll have all summer to feed up your baby fish, and measure them in at the Koi Show in September. Next Meeting April 26, 2009 at 1:00pm Parasites Lecture and Microscope Demonstration by Jason Sargeant Pick up 2009 Membership Card! Members are welcome to attend the Board of Directors meeting at 11:30. Home of Duane & Melody Carlson 8725 Spooner Court Granite Bay, CA (916) Please bring your own chair if possible. Please bring snacks to share!!!

2 Page 2 MARCH MEETING PHOTOS Marilee Marshall March s meeting was at the home of Rick and Joy Burns in Folsom. Jim Phillips (above) discussed how to build a homemade filter (blue barrel above) for your quarantine tank. April 2009

3 Page 3 April 2009 ANNOUNCEMENTS KOI PERSON OF THE YEAR Please send Marilee (dammmm6@sbcglobal.net) your nomination for AKCA Koi Person of the Year. Each year every AKCA club honors a club member who they feel has made a significant contribution to koi keeping and/or to their club during the past year. We will accept additional nominations at the April meeting. Voting will be via for several days following the meeting. AKCA needs to know our honoree by May 5. CKC SHOW JUDGES ANNOUNCED! Galen Hansen will be Head Judge at this year s koi show. Larry Gill will be our second Judge. Erwin Santos is an AKCA Candidate Judge and will be judging as well. More show info next month! BUYING TRIP I am currently working on putting together this year s buying trip. It will be a local trip since that is what the majority of February s survey respondent's wanted. I have tentatively scheduled it for Saturday June 6th. I am thinking we will meet somewhere central to North/South Sacramento and visit Koi Enterprise, Flora Tropicana, Majestic Koi, stop for lunch, then visit Nimbus Pond Supply and Sacramento Koi before returning to our starting point. As in the past I will try to arrange special discounts with dealers for this day only. This year s trip will again be caravan style to save money, and will not cost you anything to attend. I am thinking stopping at Steve s Pizza (and salad bar!) in Elk Grove for lunch, which will be on the club. I will announce sign-ups as soon as I have the date firmed up with the dealers. Ellen CONTEST REMINDERS Don t forget to sign in at meetings and other club events! The person who attends the most events will win a prize at this year s holiday party! Don t forget to have local vendors sign and date the back of your membership card when you make a purchase! The person who has the most signatures at year end will also receive a prize! (The buying trip would be a great way to rack up 5 signatures in one day!) Please pick up your cards at an upcoming meeting. ANNUAL HOLIDAY DINNER Mark your calendars! This year s Annual Holiday Dinner will be at the Golden Dragon Buffet in Roseville at 2:00 on Sunday, December 13th. Cost should be $20/person or less.

4 Page 4 OPEN LETTER TO ALL AKCA AFFILIATED CLUBS Jerry Kyle Koi Health Advisors (KHA) are not Koi EMT s It Is Time To Join The KHA Program! by Jerold Kyle, KHA Thinking about being a Koi Health Advisor (KHA)? It is definitely something to consider, a way to learn to be a better keeper of your own Koi, a way to support the AKCA, your local Koi club, your Koi, your friends, and the community. The primary value of a KHA is not to be available at 10:00 pm when someone calls in a panic and says, Help, my Koi is lying on its side and hardly moving - What should I do? It may sound harsh, but one Fish Veterinarian said to me the reality is that the best thing for the pond owner at that moment is to take two aspirins and go to bed. What!?? The point is that by the time one got that call it was probably already too late. The whole purpose of becoming a KHA is not to be a Koi EMT but to learn and teach good preventative koi husbandry principals in order to help prevent this kind of situation. There is no silver bullet and there is no magic wonder drug to learn about so you can always be a heroic Koi EMT and run around saving lives. Koi health is much like people health in that prevention is the best medicine. It is a lot less stressful on both the patient and the KHA. It is about the environment we live in and the air we breathe for both people and Koi. People that eat right, exercise right, get proper rest at night, drink plenty of liquids are generally healthier than those who don t. How does a Koi eat right, you ask? KHA people know. Exercise? Do Koi exercise? The healthy ones do and a KHA knows how. Proper rest and plenty of liquids? I must be kidding with the plenty of liquids, right? Nope, it s called osmoregulation and is just one of the things a KHA learns about. There may be no silver bullets but there is a ton of information in the KHA Program that when put together will make someone much more knowledgeable than the average pond owner. Their Koi will be more healthy and comfortable too. There is a greater personal comfort level when one understands the ins and outs of water quality and good Koi health along with knowing there is a support group to turn to when one does not have the answers. We don t all have all the answers but KHAs all have the Veterinarians and qualified teachers along with more advanced KHA members who want to help and are part of the KHA support group. It is gratifying to be involved with such a dedicated group of people. Every club needs and prizes the KHA that is part of their group but they need more. Unfortunately, there are still too few KHAs with some clubs doing without altogether. It is an honor and a privilege to be in a position to help other club members by sharing knowledge. It also feels good to be respected. KHA is at the forefront striving to keep up with the newest, ever changing, Koi husbandry information, new meds, and new technology. The KHA Continuing Education Program helps make being and/or having a KHA in a club invaluable. KHA Classes begin in July and you can sign up from then until the end of November. However, the sooner you get started the more time you have and the easier it may be. It is time to think about being involved in improving your knowledge and value to your club. Except for the final Lab portion of the class, which will be held at the AKCA Annual Seminar May 19-23, 2010, in Nashville TN, everything is handled on line at your own pace. The quizzes are open book. If you do not know the answer you are directed where to look. There is so much information that the greatest lesson may be in the learning where to look. The admission fee of $100 will be refunded if one completes the course within two years which means if you stick with it, the course is free as AKCA picks up the tab for you. The KHA Class Coordinator is Tim Czech who can be reached by at <tim.czech@wel-design.com>. Interested? You should be. Let Tim know if you are considering joining this dedicated group and he will send you the details.

5 Page 5 April 2009 CLASSIFIEDS AIR PUMP FOR SALE I have a brand new never been use Dolphin AV-150 and a extra repair kit for sale for only $120. Contact Dennis Tran, dvtran21@sbcglobal.net. KOI & EQUIPMENT FOR SALE Our March meeting host received a phone call from a guy with some gorgeous fish that he is removing from his pond. His name is Rick Capallo and anyone interested in his koi and equipment should call 209/ or 209/ KOI & EQUIPMENT FOR SALE Gus and I looked at a pond this a.m. that has equipment and beautiful koi. The owner is getting rid of the set up and koi. $ takes all. Do you think some of the members would be interested in going in together and getting some gorgeous fish and good equipment? Contact Leslie and Gus Cubillo, leswolfe@gmail.com GROWTH CONTEST FISH FOR SALE APRIL 26! $10 EACH! ALL MONEY GOES TO THE CLUB! Purchase one (or more!) fish at April meeting in Granite Bay (~25 available) Bring the fish to our September Koi Show and whosever fish has grown the most by September will win a prize! The fish available are shusui, ginrin benigoi, and yamabuki longfin. They are baby koi from Lincoln Koi s mudpond. Thanks to Howard for this generous donation to the club, and to Duane and Melody Carlson who are quarantining the koi for us. As always, even though we are quarantining these fish we still recommend that you implement your own quarantine procedures when you bring new fish home. FREE PLANTS Free Bull Rush and Zebra Rush. Ellen Evans for more info. kde2@comcast.net 6 TANKS FOR SALE Need a quarantine set-up? These tanks are a good first step (now you just need air and a small filter!) The tanks that are for sale are the ones CKC acquired from a club in Arizona a few years back. They are the Japanese style tanks with an exposed top ring. They have had hooks installed on them to hold the nets on. The nets will be included. We simply prefer to go with another style at our koi shows. Some of them will need some repair work for the velcro strips that hold the ring in place. We are asking $75 each and that money goes to the club. Jim Phillips at truckinhairbear@comcast.net if interested.

6 Page 6 April 2009 MARCH 29, 2009 BOD MINUTES Marilee Marshall Attending: Tiedemann, Marshall, Phillips Minutes from February approved. Treasurer Report: $7, Since key Directors were unavailable at this time, it wasn t thought to be expedient to make policy discussion until both Ellen and Georgia can be present. Jim did give us an update on Koi Show planning. Most of the vendor spaces have been tentatively reserved. He doesn t consider vendors to be guaranteed until they have paid their fees. So far there are 2 vendors identified who want to be sponsors, and we discussed the perks we want to offer to highlight their participation. This would certainly be the case for the Show Program itself. The Show Banquet will be at the Golden Dragon Buffet in Roseville. It is very close the Staybridge Suites where the judges will be staying, and an easy distance from the Fairgrounds. The Board members present agree that we should use the CKC web pages to showcase Show Sponsors prominently; perhaps on the Home page. Links to vendors in general (not Show participants) may depend on their level of support to the club; whether on website public pages, or in the n Member s Only section. Discussion on web advertising will be postponed until Ellen and Georgia are available. Marilee announced the Christmas Banquet would be on December 13, Sunday at 3:00 pm at the Golden Dragon Buffet on Pleasant Grove Blvd in Roseville. Meeting concluded around 12:20 p.m. FINANCIAL SUMMARY Georgia Vonk February 1 Balance $ Expenses ($ ) Income $ February 28 Balance $ *Revised from last month. Main expense was koi show venue deposit. Main income was dues. March 1 Balance $ Expenses ($2.64) Income $ March 31 Balance $

7 Page 7 April 2009 AN UNWELCOME GUEST AND OTHER SPRING TALES Ellen Evans I was woken up in early March at 4:30am by a gnawing noise above me. Oh no, rats! I thought. I lay quietly listening for other noises and then heard this heavy walking around on our roof. Not like squirrels or cats. Big and heavy, like a person. Then I heard some noises on the patio. The motion sensor light went on. Clearly some kind of intruder was in the yard. My adrenaline surged as I tried to form a plan. Wake up Kirk, call the police, flee the house? I got out of bed and peeked out from behind the blinds with trepidation. Waddling across the deck was the most humungous raccoon I have ever seen. I had never seen a raccoon in our neighborhood before, and swore we just didn t have them in our part of the city. Based on the weights of previous pets I have had, I would estimate him at pounds at least. I have seen beavers in the zoo and he was well larger than them, as well as other raccoons I have seen in my lifetime. This was a very big deal, from a koi keeping perspective. Probably number one enemy of koi keepers (excluding parasites), is raccoons, followed by herons. I didn t want to scare him away yet, I wanted to see what he would do. He went over to the bamboo water return spout under the palm trees and drank out of the pond for a bit. Then he waddled over to the end of the pond where it s clear of bushes and put both his arms in the water up to his shoulders and just waited, staring into the water. Now washing his hands or anything, just waiting there patiently with his furry arms totally immersed in 55F water. He was fishing! The fish were asleep anyway, just kind of drifting down near the bottom. I turned on the other motion sensor light and that didn t bother him, he just looked up. Then I opened the door and stepped out onto the deck and hissed at him. (Best to use language he d understand ) He ambled back about 10 feet into the dark. Lacking anything to throw, I walked further into the backyard, hissing, and he ran up our plum tree and onto the neighbor s fence. Then he just sat on the fence waiting for me to go away. So I walked all the way back to the fence and hissed some more and he jumped into the alley. Then I looked over the fence and he was just puttering around in the alley and now a dog was barking from someone else s yard. So I hissed at him again and he bumbled off to someone else s driveway several houses away. Then I had to try and fall back asleep knowing my alarm was going to go off in an hour, with my stomach all knotted up with worry for the koi that he would come back. I presumed that now that he had been in our neighborhood and had discovered our pond, surely he would deem it a place worth returning to. The fact that I heard him on the roof means that he climbed the arborvitae next to the front porch, got onto the roof, and clumsily descended one of the wooden poles supporting the shade roof over the patio. I intended to put our netting over the pond, possibly even reinstall our unused scarecrow squirter. But whether due to laziness or denial, I convinced myself that everything would be fine as is and made no additional protections. After all, as long as he has to enter the backyard via the roof, I will surely hear him walking around overhead before he can do any real damage, right? Plus our pond is the standard recommended greater This timid neighborhood stray cat has adopted our backyard as her own. She drinks out of the pond but never bothers the fish. Here you see her making good use of our pond equipment.

8 Page 8 April 2009 AN UNWELCOME GUEST AND OTHER SPRING TALES Ellen Evans than three feet in depth, with no steps or ledges. So he couldn t really even catch anything, right? Of course, immediately after I wished I had taken a picture of him for the Koi Ahoy. Because how often do you catch a raccoon in the act of fishing for koi? He didn t even care that the light was on him! It has now been five weeks and he hasn t returned. With each passing night I feel we are more and more in the clear, but my we don t have raccoons here bubble has certainly been burst. I still wake up at little noises, stiffen, and think, He s back! I keep the camera at the ready on my dresser. In other pond news, I recently solved an ongoing mystery of ours. For years, every time Kirk cleaned the filter he noticed little wormy things living on the walls of the filter even in the filter media. We had no idea what they were. We never saw them on the fish so we ruled out any type of parasitic worm. And they did not swim around in the water like mosquito larvae, so we ruled that out as well. They seemed to come out of (or go into?) little shells or cases affixed to the walls of the filter. They use something on or near their head to move around, and can also anchor themselves with their tails. I took some close-up pictures of them on a piece of PVC that we keep in our skimmer basket. After some online searching, I have decided that they are midgefly larvae and pupae. We definitely get little clouds of gnats around the yard in the evening in summer, so presumably this is just the adult form of these little worms in our pond. Apparently there are over 2,000 species of midgeflies, and I am not an entomologist, so I am not going to stress out over identifying exactly what kind of fly this is. From what I have read, there are biting midges (better known as no-see-ums or sand flies) and then there are non-biting midges. I have encountered the biting variety on a trip to Florida and know how bad these can be, so I am relieved that the gnats in our yard definitely are of the non-biting persuasion. Since the larvae have no adverse effects on our fish, I don t think we need to take any sort of action. In fact, supposedly fish love eating midgefly larvae, as attested to by the large number of websites that instruct fly fishermen how to make flies that resemble them. Maybe fish who aren t regularly fed pellets would be into that, but not our lazy koi. Although koi are supposed to eat insects, invertebrates, and even other small fish, our koi have never shown any such inclination. In fact, the mosquito fish in our pond also go after the koi pellets! They do enthusiastically eat any wayward garden snails that have wandered too close to the edge of the water, so I can only imagine how succulent and delicious a snail must be to be worth the effort to a well-fed koi. I guess both the worms and the raccoon serve as reminders that even in an urban environment our ponds are their own little biosystem. We will never replicate natural ponds exactly (which is why we need filters), but our pond is also not a protected bubble for our koi, free of nature s influence. We do what we can to maintain a balanced, healthy environment for our koi in hopes that they lead long, happy lives.

9 Page 9 April Club Calendar Please note that these locations/topics are subject to change. Be sure to check the newsletter or website each month for the most current meeting information. Green = firm, Yellow = tentative, Red = need host/topic. DATE TOPIC LOCATION February 22, 2009 Nasty Nitrates Vonk (Lincoln) March 29, 2009 Quarantining Lecture Burns (Folsom) April 26, 2009 Growth Contest, Parasite Management, Microscope Demo Carlson (Granite Bay) Spring/Summer TBA Possible tour of UC Davis Fish Health Clinic May 31, 2009 Koi Auction Sakai (Roseville) tentative June TBA (prob. the 6th) Annual Koi Buying Trip Local Dealers June 28, 2009 July 26, 2009 Pond Foam Seminar and BBQ!!! Tran (Sacramento) Planting in/around Ponds Golden Pond Nursery (Loomis) tentative August 30, 2009 Annual Potluck Lake s Nursery (Newcastle) September 27, 2009 October 25, 2009 November 22, 2009 December TBA ANNUAL KOI SHOW DIY FILTRATION Using solar energy to offset your pond s electricity costs! ANNUAL HOLIDAY DINNER PLACER COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS (Roseville) Cubillo (Antelope) Need host! To Be Announced Please Marilee (address below) if you have a topic you would like to suggest for a meeting! Hosting is a great opportunity to show off your finished pond and fish or to get input on a project in progress! If you would like to host a meeting, please contact Marilee Marshall at dammmm6@sbcglobal.net. Meeting hosts get $40 to buy some snacks and drinks, and members bring more snacks and their own chairs. For wet months it is a good idea to have enough indoor space to squeeze people in case of rain. For hot summer months, a shady spot is appreciated.

10 Board of Directors President: Marilee Marshall Vice President: Heather Marshall Secretary: open Treasurer: Georgia Vonk 916/ Director:: Jim Phillips Director: Duane Carlson Director:: Ken Tiedemann Director:: Ellen Evans Koi Ahoy Editor & Webmaster Ellen Evans Ellen Evans nd Ave Sacramento, CA 95817