Vet caters to clientele hooked on pet fish.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - After a quick look at the wolf eel with paralysis and a glance at the yellow eye rockfish with a bad swim bladder, Tim Miller-Morgan moves on to a dark blotch rockfish with a mother of an eye problem.

The poor guy, known as 03-14, spent weeks cowering from a bully fish with "personal space" issues in the Hatfield Marine Science Center's Eye Level exhibit. The stress left the smaller fish vulnerable to a host of hungry protozoa, bacteria and parasites.

It might appear to the untrained observer that 03-14 has a bad case of cataracts - puffy, bloated, cloudy eyes - that limits his vision to a few inches. But Miller-Morgan, an Oregon State University aquatic veterinarian, knows better.

This is a nasty parasite called a fluke. The flatworm has latched itself onto the rockfish's corneas, leaving ulcers at each spot where the parasite's hooks are attached.

What could be worse than a parasite on the eyeball? A parasite that lays eggs on the eyeball - eggs that can't be destroyed.

Not to worry, Miller-Morgan would reassure 03-14 if fish understood English. A bi-weekly formaldehyde bath will kill the infant flatworms as they hatch, and 03-14's eyesight will return to normal.

Thus begins another workday for Oregon State University's only ornamental fish veterinarian, one of a handful in the United States. He attends to a wide variety of species from the common rockfish to the wildly popular Japanese koi, part of the pet fish industry that has exploded in the past 10 years.

Last year, OSU developed the Ornamental Aquatic Animal Health Program, one of only a few extension programs nationally to offer education, training and medical help for exotic pet fish.

Now the program is going mobile. Miller-Morgan travels across the West to host seminars on ornamental fish care. He offers "wet labs" for people to learn about how to handle and recognize health problems. He teaches veterinarians, and wholesale and retail fish sellers about good medicine, and he fields calls and e-mails from owners around the world.

In most cases, Miller-Morgan doesn't have time for house calls. "If I did, I'd never be home myself," he says. But the program is already saving precious lives, say koi fanatics who've run to Miller-Morgan.

The second that Charlotte Jones' foot hits the back deck of her Newport home, a dozen fish rush to the edge of her 100-gallon pond for food and attention. The half-dozen goldfish don't have names, but the prized koi are Big Blue, Heckle, Jeckle, Domino and Peaches.

In the spring, when the fish's immune systems wake from a cold winter making them more susceptible to parasites and bacteria, they require a good amount of sustenance. So Jones feeds them Honey Nut Cheerios (for the carbohydrates). They'll also eat watermelon, right from her hand (a good source of vitamin C). Big Blue likes to suck on her fingers.

When Jones first delved into the hobby, she knew only a fraction of what she knows now about koi. That proved fatal for the delicate fish.

Raccoons snatched two of them, right out of the pond. (She now has a 6-foot chain-link fence erected around the yard.) Skipper jumped out - likely unhappy with the pond's water quality - and landed in a puddle, where he baked to death in a rare 92-degree Newport day. Others fell victim to disease.

"I ended up with fish dropping like flies," Jones said. "When they die, you really care. Not as much as with a dog, maybe, but I get really sad."

After the third casualty, Jones called Miller-Morgan, whom she'd heard about through the local koi club. Because Jones is local, Miller-Morgan dropped by and took scrapings from the fish skin. He identified fbacteria and directed her to food laced with antibiotics.

Some enthusiasts are known to spend up to $10,000 on a single koi, Miller-Morgan said, and up to $1 million constructing their habitat. The fish are imported from Japan by the thousands each year.

There are now more than 13 million ornamental fish owners, who spend more than $2 billion a year on products, Miller-Morgan said. Ten years ago, there were a few dozen koi clubs in the United States. Now there are about 100, said Tom Graham, publisher of Koi USA magazine.

"I just look at the number of products on the market, companies growing like gangbusters selling pond-related products," Graham said. "Nine or 10 years ago, there was only one person making filters specifically for koi ponds. Now there are dozens."

The demand for well-trained veterinarians has yet to be met, however. Most vets know a thing or two about ornamental fish, but they're often uncomfortable treating them.

That's where the OSU program comes in. But it doesn't focus only on caring for fish. Miller-Morgan is researching alarming fish mortality rates - as high as 80 percent - of pet fish caught in the wild. Considering that wild fish make up 98 percent of the 800 species of the most common aquarium fish, it's a significant problem.

While most imported birds and mammals are quarantined to prevent the spread of disease, there aren't such regulations for fish, Miller-Morgan said. So he tries to teach fish buyers the importance of quarantine. A diseased fish, he warns, can kill an entire pond population.

Mike Rice of Gresham called Miller-Morgan in a panic last year. His koi hobby had grown from a few in a hundred-gallon pond in the back yard seven years ago to dozens in the 6,700-gallon pond he now looks after.

"It's a lot of fun to buy fish," Rice says, "so you tend to easily overpopulate your pond. When that happens, it isn't long before you need Tim's help. He saved a lot of my fish."

Last spring, many of Rice's fish got sick and started dying, one by one. With some in his collection worth several hundred dollars, Rice needed to diagnose the problem fast. He'd been to one of Miller-Morgan's wet labs, so after talking with the vet on the phone, Rice learned to conduct a kidney biopsy on one of the dead fish.

Rice sent a sample of the kidney to OSU, where it was tested, and he discovered that a common bacteria was causing the problem. In less than a week, Rice got a prescription from a veterinarian for the proper antibiotics, and he guesses he saved a dozen fish.

"I haven't lost any fish this year," the proud owner boasts. And this is important to him. "I'm 50 years old, and I have never been addicted to anything. But I have to admit, I'm probably addicted to this."

Miller-Morgan is getting used to the obsession. A local woman called him at 11:30 p.m. a couple years back. Her 13-year-old goldfish was laying on its side having trouble breathing. He wound up working on the fish till almost dawn.

Sadly, the goldfish didn't make it through the night. But as Miller-Morgan's program grows, perhaps such misfortune will fade out, like flukes dunked in formaldehyde.

ADVICE ON SICK FISH

Contact Tim Miller-Morgan at [phone] or [e-mail]

CAPTION(S):

Tim Miller-Morgan prepares to examine a rockfish at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.