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pond supplies Lymnozyme koi
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In
the Koi industry we are blessed with some of the most creative and
innovative minds in the world. Over the years some of our most farsighted
prime movers have been responsible for the development of some of the most
exciting products anywhere. The bottom line is that in 2000 the
wherewithal to keep Koi properly has never been more accessible, available
or affordable. In this context we are indeed fortunate if once in a
generation along comes a product that really induces a step change in our
ability to keep Koi - this is an introduction to one such product as it
finally gives us the power to control one of our oldest adversaries -
Aeromonas!
 Whatever
we do as Koi enthusiasts to push the limits of our water keeping
ability, because of the nature of the aquatic environment that is our Koi
pond, the potential risks of pathogenic bacterial are ever present. Of all
the pathogens that create havoc in Koi ponds Aeromonas and Pseudomonas are
perhaps our biggest adversaries. Conventional measures to control or
reduce the levels of bacteria in our Koi ponds involve chemical agents of
one form or another. Not only are these chemicals indiscriminate in that
they will affect vital nitrifying as well as undesirable pathogenic
bacteria and thus risk impacting negatively on our filter systems, but the
long term effect on Koi of some of these chemicals are at best unknown. So
what would you give to have a totally natural non chemical organic method
of reducing the levels of pathogenic bacteria in your system with ZERO
negative impact on Koi or the vital life giving nitrifying bacteria in
your filter and ... a product that not only works, but can be given to
work and in fact has been working for almost 2 years?
Everyone
who keeps Koi is well acquainted with the dangers posed by bacteria.
The very utterance of the word Aeromonas is enough to make most self
respecting Koi keepers break into a cold sweat! Even in the best Koi
systems Aeromonas is a real threat. In its most benign form its predatory
nature as an opportunist bacteria can result in a small problem escalating
into a big and potentially life threatening problem with terrifying speed.
In poor environments the truth is Koi keepers are simply playing Russian
roulette with their Koi and as we all know the house (in this case
Aeromonas) always wins in the end. The fact is that Aeromonas in their
many forms take a heavy toll each year and in the Spring time especially
the head count is even more depressing. The dreaded Aeromonas in its many
incarnations is also credited with countless guerrilla raids endured by
hundreds of unsuspecting Koi enthusiasts each and every year which by
their nature, often come and go before any real diagnosis is made by the
trade mark dead Koi represents real if anecdotal evidence of their
passing. How many subsistence Koi keepers do you know keep Koi for several
seasons albeit at a relatively unsophisticated level, get nailed by
Aeromonas lose all their Koi and simply pack it in? For serious Koi
Keepers the problems are potentially even worse - what price a surviving
but ruined best tategoi? Whatever the level of Koi keeping the degree of
the potential threat is the same. Effective treatment of serious Aeromonas
infections are at best inconsistent and in anything other than early
treatment, the very best it gets is survival and even then often with
extremely defacing scarring.
The
principles of competitive exclusion (CE) are well understood
throughout a wide spectrum of livestock industries and various methods of
application are widely deployed to access the well understood and proven
benefits. At the core of the principle of CE is the established fact that
species with similar life sustaining requirements, such as food and
habitat, will compete with each other for these available life sustaining
resources. In circumstances where two species become ‘perfect
competitors' one of the species will survive and one will become extinct.
The principle of competitive exclusion applies to all life forms and in
the case of the aquatic environment that is our Koi pond it also applies
specifically to bacteria. A far sighted creative US aquaculture specialist
Jim Keeton who has spent a lifetime developing products and equipment for
the aquaculture industry and whose company Keeton Industries is a market
leader, decided to apply the principles of CE to the control of bacteria.
The work resulted in the emergence of the discovery that the nutrition
source of Aeromonas and Pseudomonas was specific to them and further that
the nitrifying bacteria, which also populate the same aquatic environment,
has a completely different food source. By removing the Aeromonas and
Pseudomonas food source it is possible to deplete the numbers and best of
all this process has zero impact on the vital nitrifiers. Further research
and extensive development resulted in the creation of a precise and
specific combination of micro nutrients, enzymes and naturally occurring
bacteria completely harmless to fish that when introduced to a pond seeks
out the vital food source, because they outnumber the opposition they
competitively exclude the Aeromonas which starved of their food source
simply die! It is this product that has already taken the US aquaculture
and Koi sectors by storm, it’s called Lymnozyme (the UK version is
called Genesyz) and is now available.
Competition
can be a powerful force affecting the growth, distribution and
abundance of populations throughout nature, so, what exactly is
Competitive Exclusion (CE)? The basic tenet is that similar, but not
identical, species compete or have competed in the past. That is, species
with similar requirements, such as habitat and food requirements, are in
competition with each other for those requirements. If two species are
perfect competitors, if they have the same competition coefficients, one
of the two will become extinct. Because species coexist even in the face
of competition, they must not be perfect competitors. Competition theory
states that perfect competitors cannot coexist and that in order to
coexist species must utilize resources differently and have different
competitive abilities. Species may utilize different food sources,
habitats, or times of activity to avoid competition. Species may become
specialized to be best at utilizing a particular resource, or they may be
generalists and be only marginally good at exploiting a wide variety of
resources to avoid competition. Competitive displacement occurs when
competition leads to the evolution of different resource utilization or
competitive abilities of species exploiting similar resources. Invasive
species often drive native species to extinction through their superior
competitive ability and this, plus superior numbers, is the essence of how
Lymnozyme prevails over Aeromonas and Pseudomonas.
The
concept of reducing pathogens in a natural way is not particularly
new, but the ability to perform the task only recently been possible. The
natural way to reduce pathogens is to "competitively exclude"
them from the vital elements they require to survive, grow and multiply.
This requires a vibrant community of nonpathogenic bacteria that utilize
the same elements and are better able to compete for them than the
pathogens. When the populations of the nonpathogens become dominant the
concept of competitive exclusion become viable. When Lymnozyme is deployed
in a pond with a high level of pathogenic bacteria count and used in
accordance with the recommended dosing protocol which includes regular
maintenance dosages, the beneficial bacteria, in this case Lymnozyme
bacteria, become the most populous, they are the ones most likely to be
successful in the highly competitive battle for the elements of survival
specifically nutrition and in this success they deny the pathogenic
bacteria of these elements and so they simply die! Only in the last few
years have these concepts been developed to the point where commercial
deployment of CE is available for commercial applications and they are now
widely used in the poultry and aquaculture industries. Competitive
Exclusion products are sometimes known as "probiotics"
direct-fed microbial or CE cultures but they are all non chemical contain
NO antibiotics and are totally natural.
One
of the difficulties encountered when trying to eliminate Aeromonas/Pseudomonas
bacteria with conventional means is that success depends to a high degree
on the host (in our case the Koi) having a higher tolerance to the
substance selected to eradicate the pathogen, than the target i.e. the
Aeromonas. As we have all discovered to our cost, this premise is not
always the case. A wide range of methods have been employed over the years
to try and eliminate or control the dreaded Aeromonas in particular, these
include: Potassium Permanganate, Formalin, Malachite, Chloramine T, UV,
Ozone and of course the entire spectrum of antibiotics. As we are all now
aware, the widespread and indiscriminate use of antibiotics has resulted
in increasingly robust bacteria many with equally robust resistance to our
antibiotic arsenal. As this problem accelerated so we move to ever more
powerful antibiotics and as we pursue this route the balance of success
and risk swings further away from our Koi - the operation was a success
but the patient is dead! All conventional methods aim to reduce or
eliminate bacteria in the water but always seem to fall short of the
intended goal. A new product that has already changed this imbalance in
Lymnozyme. Unimpeachable evidence from the koi keepers throughout the US,
indicates that Lymnozyme could dramatically change the way we go about
keeping our Koi healthier. Lymnozyme for the first time delivers Koi
Keepers the means of deploying the principles of competitive exclusion in
our Koi ponds. Lymnozyme is a proprietary mixture made of naturally
occurring non pathogenic beneficial bacteria, micro nutrients and enzymes
which are perfect competitors for Aeromonas and Pseudomonas and when
introduced to Koi ponds completely eliminate or significantly reduce them.
In this case Lymnozyme, when introduced to a new habitat (your pond) where
they have not previously existed and because they are both superior
competitors and present in superior numbers they simply consume all the
available nutrients and literally starve Aeromonas and Pseudomonas into
extinction! Because bacteria have specific nutritional requirements and
because Lymnozyme consume the same food source as pathogens such as
Aeromonas/Pseudomonas and NOT the nitrifying bacteria vital to our filters
the nitrifiers specifically Nitrobacter and Nitrosomonas are simply not
competitors for the same food source as either Aeromonas or Lymnozyme, so
are totally unaffected and coexist by contrast the Aeromonas and
Pseudomonas are and so they're starved to death!! If you subscribe to the
theory of CE and is tough not to, Lymnozyme is a truly remarkable product
as it's completely safe for both fish and filters.
The
essence of the challenge to Koi Keepers is that our only previous
weapon to reduce levels of bacteria in our pond were chemical
bactericides. Products like Chloramine ‘T', Potassium Permanganate and
others, while being effective at reducing levels of bacteria, are totally
indiscriminate and kill all bacteria! Including the vital nitrifiers, this
often results in a reduction in filter performance, but given the
alternative was certainly better than nothing. Now there is not only an
alternative - but a real solution.
Perhaps
the most exciting element of this story is that not only do all the
trials undertaken everywhere deliver compelling anecdotal evidence that
Lymnozyme does exactly what it claims, but almost uniquely in our
experience of the Koi sector Lymnozyme can definitively prove it's claims.
The level of bacteria present in any aquatic environment can be measured.
These levels are expressed in CFU/ml, this means colony forming units per
milliliter similar to the way chemical concentrations are also expressed,
these are industry standards common to both the USA, UK and Japan. In
basic terms the higher the CFU/ml level the higher the concentration of
bacteria. Water samples taken from any Koi pond can be analyzed by any
independent laboratory and a precise measurement taken of the levels of
Aeromonas and Pseudomonas that are present in the sample. By repeating
this analysis following treatments with Genesyz it is possible to track
and definitively measure the reduction in the levels of Aeromonas and
Pseudomonas that remain. This elevates Lymnozyme beyond the albeit value
reports of real Koi Keepers into the realms of demonstrable proof! The
results detailed in this feature are the results generated by certified
laboratories from different parts of the USA and UK - the results are
compelling. Scrutiny of the data indicates that levels of Aeromonas and
Pseudomonas bacteria are significantly reduced and or eliminated. The
consequences of this for us as Koi Keepers is that we now have the
ultimate power to eradicate one of the single biggest threats to our Koi.
Consider also that Koi professionals, breeders and everyone who keeps fish
now has access to a product that not only works but that can prove it
works.
Lymnozyme
has been in use in the aquatic industry since 1997 and in the Koi
sector since 1999 and increasing reports from Koi Keepers has also
revealed another series of benefits. It is emerging that pathogenic
bacteria in general and Aeromonas and Pseudomonas in particular not only
have a detrimental effect on Koi but also do nitrifying bacteria no favors
either. By removing them from a Koi pond the performance of the nitrifiers
also appears to improve which in turn has an indirect benefit in terms of
improved filter performance and ultimately better water quality. Jim
Keeton specifically makes no claims in this area simply because it's
impossible to prove whereas by total contrast the depletion of the real
problem - Aeromonas and Pseudomonas can and is proven.
Lymnozyme
is potentially one of the most exciting products we have come across
in a generation. In addition to offering serious Koi enthusiasts a genuine
golden bullet in their quest to extract the last few percentage points out
of their great systems, consider the benefits for the thousands of pond
keepers who while they have Koi they often don't enjoy the same level of
filtration, husbandry and maintenance as their more serious Koi Keeping
colleagues. Their fate is often sealed by a dose of Aeromonas - now this
need not be the case. In addition to providing Koi Keepers a major
solution, Lymnozyme offers all aquarists the same. Whether you keep Koi,
Marine, Trops, Coldwater Green Tench or Orfe Lymnozyme will nail the
Aeromonas and Pseudomonas in your water.
This
data was produced by independent water testing laboratories in
different parts of the USA and the UK. The test protocol was to take a
water sample before dosing the pond with an initial does, then again after
subsequent doses and different stages of the dosing protocol. These
independent lab results are conclusive and compelling and offer definitive
proof that Genesyz actually excluded Aeromonas and Pseudomonas from Koi
ponds. There is also lots of information on the Internet detailing user
results with the US product Lymnozyme Erik Johnson has done exhaustive
tests and his views are posted on his web site www.koivet.com.
My
personal experience with the product was similar to many others who
have been testing Lymnozyme. I had water samples taken from both my ponds
and submitted them to a microbiology lab where Aeromonas and Pseudomonas
were cultured for baseline CFU/ml numbers (note the standard measure for
bacteria is CFU/ml CFU = colony forming units). In my case neither of my
ponds had detectable Pseudomonas and the Aeromonads CFU's were 2,000cfu in
Pond A and 1000 CFU in pond B, both very low numbers to begin with. I
followed the manufacturers recommendations for dosing which include an
initial dose three treatments three days apart a consolidation dose two
more doses every week for two weeks and then a maintenance dose (half the
initial and consolidation doses). At the three week mark I had my water
tested again and now both ponds have undetectable levels of Aeromonas or
Pseudomonas - pretty compelling stuff! The price of Lymnozyme is
inexpensive and if you factor in the potential cost not to mention the
heartache of losing a good and treasured Koi, the price of the product is
irrelevant!
The two most important conclusions that these results determine is:
1/
When introduced to Koi systems Lymnozyme is 100% successful in excluding
Aeromonas and Pseudomonas.
2/
Lymnozyme is a totally natural organic product that contains ZERO
chemicals or antibiotics.
The implications of this are far reaching and it's no exaggeration to
say that Lymnozyme really can change Koi Keeping at every level.
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