Question
I have 7 fish in a 600 gallon pond in the NE and we had 3 ft of snow. I have aeration and deicer in pond, however snow fell so hard and fast that a drift covered the entire pond, yet the pond did not freeze completely because of the deicer and aeration. I shoveled the snow away three days later after I could finally get to the house as we were away and got snowed out. One of my Koi appears in distress. It is about 18 inches long and was laying on its side. It is still alive and breathing. I removed it from the tank and put it in its own tank with aeration. The water temp is around 38 degrees. When I looked at it, it's gills are opening. I don't know if anything else I can do for it. It's really breaking my heart to see it like this. All other fish appear healthy and on bottom. This one appeared to be stuck near the surface ice and I had to free it. Is ther anything else I can do for the little guy? Thanks

Answer
Dear Mark,

I think the issue here is the cold water combined with distress.
The koi laying on its side appears when the water is to cold and then the swimming blather can be frozen. This we see more often in cases where the water itself is lower then 8癈.
When the temperature is around the 8癈 the best way is to leave the koi alone as when you walk around the pond or remove the snow they get distressed more and will come to the surface where the will then can stick to the ice and die.
You did good by placing the koi in quarantine, however the best way to do so is the place water from the pond in the Quarantine and raise temp just with few degrees at A time very slow.
When you are in luck the best way to go is to leave the koi (maybe with A friend) in the quarantine and also in the more dark areas of the house without much motion.
When then applied with aeration and filtering (no or very low feeding), and small waterchanges it will survive the winter.

Hope this helps!
Kind regards,
Raf