I forgot to ask about the chemicals when I talked with my dad but I think he'd have mentioned it if he thought it could have been runoff from something. Anyway, I stopped by after work and netted a couple fish. I'm not so sure there aren't multiple problems. I found one orange fantail that was a little slower and appeared to have something on its lip so I netted it and found its lips were very rough, eaten off possibly. I flared his gills and found a lot of brown buildup on the gills themselves. I then tried catching one of the new fish. They were shbunkin comets or however that's spelled. I caught a fish that looked similar to this, about 6" long, whitish grey body with black and orange speckles. I don't know that it was acting wierd or anything but it just happened to be the unlucky sucker I netted. its mouth and gills looked normal but its tail was partially eaten off in the middle. The best I can describe how it looked was if you were to take a leaf and use a lighter to burn part of the leaf back. It looked as though the tail had been burned back and had red flesh showing at the base of the wound. It didn't really look like a bite from a snake or anything that had grasped it and ripped but something much much smaller, maybe even bacteria small. The last time my parents purchased fish from this supplier they got a flesh eating disease of some type that killed lots of fish but I'm not sure this is the same symptoms since my parents had to leave town for a couple days. I called them and they said they'd found 4 more dead fish before they left this morning but didn't notice any external damage other than the gill flaps folded backwards on a couple of them. I'm not sure whether there is a parasite on the gills plus some type of flesh eating bacteria or something or whether this could be a common problem for both symptoms. I'm going to call the fish farm tomorrow and speak with them. my parents had called but they just wanted a water sample and a dead fish. Maybe since I have found this new information they might be able to help on the phone since they're an hour away from me and I don't have a dead fish yet. Hopefully you guys have seen such a problem? Most of their fish are common goldfish, fantails and such with a couple comets and 3 koi a little over a foot long. the koi don't show any symptoms that I know of (no way to catch them) but the goldfish and comets seem to be sharing the problem. I didn't notice any visible worms, flukes, ich, abnormal slime or scale problems and externally the gills looked fine on these two. thanks for any help, KYle