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UPDATE: IT'S FISH TB. ...Help me diagnose this disease that's killing my fish

27K views 108 replies 20 participants last post by  FlyingShawn 
#1 · (Edited)
MAJOR UPDATE:
The fish were euthanized and necropsied: all signs point to Fish TB/Mycobacterium. Full details and microscope slides can be found starting on this post:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/21-fish/156350-update-its-fish-tb-help-me-diagnose-disease-thats-killing-my-fish-4.html#post1698370



Original Post:

I have a mysterious disease that's been slowly infecting and killing my fish one-by-one over a long period of time. The characteristic symptoms are a very-slight bloating of the stomach and a collapse/dramatic weight loss of the body aft of the stomach (the front half of the fish seems fine, but wastes away in his back half). Here's the latest infected, a ~2 year old Odessa barb (FYI the white patch on his forehead has been there his entire life, although it does seem to cover a slightly larger area now):


As a point of comparison, here is the sick Odessa next to one of his healthy tank mates so you can see the change in body shape:


I QT all my new fish (in the past it was only for a week, but that's since increased to a month since I got a dedicated QT) and this disease is slow enough that I can't trace it back to any new additions. The first victims were a platy and some neon tetras (hard to diagnose in the tetras, so I'm not sure it's the same thing that did them in).

After they died, I noticed the other platy in the tank was exhibiting symptoms, so I set up a QT specifically for him so I could isolate him and attempt treatment. He ended up living for a full two months in QT before dying. During that time, he exhibited the same symptoms described above, became somewhat skittish, and had a healthy appetite right up until the end. I tried treating with Tetra's Parasite Clear and Jungle's medicated anti-parasite and anti-worm foods (don't know if those would have made a difference since the fish always just spit them out), to no avail.

I've recently upgraded from a heavily stocked 20gal to a lightly-stocked, planted 52gal and moved the Odessa's into the new tank since they all seemed healthy. So far the water parameters have been very good: PH ~6.8-7.4 (I've had to put some baking soda in when I do water changes, I think the tap water has changed and now has near-zero buffer in it), Ammonia 0.0-0.1, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0-5ppm.

Have any of you seen this before? Is there any treatment?
 
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#3 ·
#6 ·
Do you have any recommendations for where to get those meds? I'm probably going to try the ones wkndracer recommended first, but it might be smart to get them and keep them in my medkit so I have them in the future.

@Wkndracer:

Reading through your posts in that quarantine thread, I saw you suggested the possible use of an HP treatment for bacteria/parasites. Do you think that'd be worth trying in the meantime while I wait for the meds you recommended to arrive?
 
#7 ·
Is the ONLY symptom bloating? Just bloating seems odd. Really without any obvious symptoms you can't know for sure without some autopsies which require a microscope and some veterinary knowledge. Do you think you could cut one open maybe if one dies? We need to see what's swollen, the swim bladder, intestines, stomach etc. Do they have trouble swimming? When did this start to occur? Add any new fish or plants?

The first victims were a platy and some neon tetras
The platy suggests something parasitic. Common livebearers are almost ALWAYS disease ridden animals.

I want to say parasites but I can't be sure. Try feeding some peas to clear any intestinal blockage and see. Observe their poo. Its coloration and texture (extremely thin, pale etc.) can tell you a lot.

I can suggest you get some garlic and mash it up a bit to get lots of good garlic juice and soak the medicated foods in the garlic. It should make them take it a little better. Plus garlic is naturally antiparasitic so there's that bonus as well.
 
#8 ·
Is the ONLY symptom bloating? Just bloating seems odd.
Actually, the bloating is only very slight (no more than you'd see after them having a bigger than normal meal). The primary symptom is the near-anorexic appearance of the body aft of the stomach, where it seems to totally collapse in on itself. Take a look at that first picture again: it's not that the thinness of the aft body just looks that way in proportion to the bloat, it's that the width of the bloat is only slightly more than the normal body shape and the tail has collapsed that much!

Coloration stays near-normal up until death, as does appetite. The infected fish will become somewhat more reclusive and skittish. There are no visible symptoms other than the ones mentioned above that I've been able to identify.

The disease first appeared in a long-established tank that hadn't received any new introductions (plant or fish) for at least a few months. That said, I can't be totally sure that it wasn't introduced by something because of the extremely slow progression of the disease: one fish at a time, dies slowly, then a few weeks later another begins to show the same symptoms.

The first platy infected had been in my tank for 2+ years and the second was actually the ~1.5 year-old offspring of some platies I had at the time, so I think I can safely discount them as the original source.

Thanks for the tip on the garlic!
 
#14 · (Edited)
Beware of fenbendazole!



I strongly, strongly, strongly (I can't emphasize this enough) recommend against fenbendazole. I killed at least 43 fish using half the dosage recommended by wkndracer. I had mistaken flubendazole for the same as fenbendazole. You can see the damage here (http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/1342425-post1341.html), how it doesn't disolve and also if you continue reading (back up a few pages for the beginning of the deaths), you'll see that it happened within hours and the deaths didn't stop for days. I lost almost everyone of my fish due to using this.

To the OP, that does look at lot like internal parasites, but the sunken stomach makes me worried that it's TB. Not to be gross, but how is their poop? Is it white and stringy (a good sign of pests) or is it normal looking?
 
#15 ·
I ordered the Leva and Flub from Charlie today. Based on what wkndracer said, I'm not planning on trying the HP while I wait for it to arrive.

If these two don't do the trick, do you have any recommendations for the order to try the others? I don't want to go nuts and order everything listed here (for the shelf life reasons mentioned above), but I need to be thinking of a plan of attack now (both an order of operation and knowing which are safe to combine vs must be dosed individually).

Aside from the Leva and Flub, you guys have suggested Metro, Prazi, Kanamyacin, Panacur, Vermisol, and Furan-2. I'm guessing the Kana should be next (in case it's TB), but I'm wide open to suggestions since I've never used any of them.

Thanks again!
 
#18 · (Edited)
fenbendazole has to be eaten to work and the raw chemical added to tank water while several have said they do it has real risks.
Sewingalot did it by accident others claim it to be practical, cheap, easier to find and safe (imo) not my tank.
Mixed with food products yes (easier to buy it that way though)
 
#19 ·
It looks like dropsy to me and metro meds may help if your fish will eat it.
 
#22 ·
-Jungle's Anti-Bacteria or Parasite medicated foods are really low on my list but hey starve them long enough and fish will eat wet cardboard LOL

I always try not to create a toxic soup with too many meds. at once. Clean water and good O2 is important having it's consideration in treatments too
 
#23 ·
-Jungle's Anti-Bacteria or Parasite medicated foods are really low on my list but hey starve them long enough and fish will eat wet cardboard LOL
That's exactly what I'm hoping: between the hunger and the garlic, it'll at least get something into their systems.

I always try not to create a toxic soup with too many meds. at once. Clean water and good O2 is important having it's consideration in treatments too
That was exactly my concern when I was asking what to combine vs dose individually. I figure the tablets can't make too much of a soup on their own and Charlie's instructions for the Flub start with "Change out as much water as you can before treatment," so I figure most of what the tablets add will be removed then.

If I begin to get concerned about the O2 levels, I can hook up an pump to the air lines/stones I ran under the substrate when setting up the tank (when it takes this long to set up a tank, you have a lot of time to plan ahead for this sort of contingency!)

BTW, thought you might like to see the tank as a whole. I picked out the Noah's Ark decoration for our first family tank when I was 5 and have displayed it in my main tank ever since (22 years!), so I decided to make it the centerpiece of the new tank's scape and title it "Mount Ararat" (sorry about it looking so bright, I was running out the door when I took the pic and didn't turn the exposure down far enough):
 

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#24 ·
haha like the story! thanks for sharing that.
The tanks I have that are filtered with a canister I clean the can about a week before I do my worming and the water changes both before and after have the critters belly dragging the gravel.

hope you get this all resolved so the drama ends.
 
#25 ·
I guess they're not as hungry as I was hoping: even with the garlic I got little interest in the Jungle food. Oh well, they'll get there eventually.

I put the sick on in a breeder box for a couple hours to observe his poop. It seemed pretty normal to me: 0.75-1.0cm long, greenish-brown coloration.

I've now dosed the tank with the Parasite Guard I mentioned earlier (including letting one of the tablets dissolve in the breeder box to give him a little-bit stronger dose before releasing him again).

Now I guess it's just a wait-and-see until I get Charlie's meds.
 
#27 ·
Sorry for a derail, but I'm finding this interesting - I used fenbendazole on my 55 tank that I had to break down. Not knowing any better, I used it (based on recommendations) for a possible planaria outbreak. Now I think they might not have been planaria. Anyhow, it was days later when my fish started dropping like flies from columnaris. I wonder if the fenbendazole could have weakened the fish's immune system? (They ate a great deal of it, and I treated with it for days)
Again, apologies for the derailment...
 
#28 ·
Hi all,

I am new to the forums, but I have been searching obsessively to find the answer to this same question. My fish have this SAME disease I have been wracking my brain to figure out what it is. Just like the OP said, my fish have slight bloating in the front, but then their rear is really droopy and wastes way. Color and appetite stay normal until the end, but in the very last stages (right before death) the wasting becomes so pronounced that the fish have difficulty swimming. Some fish will last for up to a month while others will be dead within a week, and it seems like whenever one fish is moved to quarantine another one has become sick.

Some info about my tank, it is 16 gallons up and running for six months now, heavily planted, with three guppies, four platys, some tiny fry, and an unknown number of cherry shrimp and MTS (recently added four assassin snails and the problem began about two months ago). Temperature stays between 73 and 74, Ph is a little bit above 7.2.

I am convinced that it must be something internal, as if it were environmental, it would affect more than one fish at once (imo). I am really worried now that it is fish TB, so I have been trying to remove fish that are showing symptoms as soon as possible, but as my tank is cooler than most tropical tanks, is this even possible? I've heard that Mycobacterium marinum's ideal temperature is closer to 30 degrees celsius. I've observed poop and it is definitely NOT white and string, it looks the same as it always has. Anyway, I will try some of the medications that previous posters have suggested, but THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING!
 
#29 ·
Hi all,

I am new to the forums, but I have been searching obsessively to find the answer to this same question. My fish have this SAME disease I have been wracking my brain to figure out what it is.
Sorry to hear that Pete.

At this point, my plan of attack is to continue with the Parasite Guard tablets, then try the Leva and Flub from Charlie, and then move on to the Kana (since it's rumored to help with TB). I'll keep you posted on what happens, but results are going to be slow in coming.

Since we're both paranoid that it's TB and I've already got the Leva and Flub on the way, would it be worthwhile for you to start with the Kana instead, as a sort of multi-vectored attack?

Let us know what happens.
 
#30 ·
I've now completed two doses of the Jungle tablets with no noticeable improvements (which is what I was expecting, since I'd tried them with the platy that died before).

I've given up on the medicated food also. Even after the garlic soak and nearly a week of not being offered anything else, they barely touched the stuff (it was also something that I'd tried with the platy). At this point, I think it'd be better to go back to the regular food (Tetra's tropical crisps are the main staple, with some freeze-dried bloodworms tossed in occasionally) than keep starving them on the medicated food.

Charlie's meds arrived on Monday, so tomorrow morning I'll do the 95% WC and administer the first dose of Flub. I plan on doing two doses of Flub per the instructions on his page, then have sewingalot's recommended break for a few days before dosing the Leva.
 
#33 ·
You were right: that stuff is a PAIN to get into solution. Even with my trick of premixing 1/4 Tsp at a time in a Ragu bottle, I still spent the next day and a half stirring the top of the water to try to mix it in.

I've just finished the first 3-day Flub treatment and started the second stage (5-7 day) treatment. Unfortunately, the Odessa seems to be continuing to go downhill rather than improving. He still has a healthy appetite (although seems to spit food out more than the others), but he seems to still be losing weight.

Also, there's a small area on his side where he seems to be missing scales and the white-spot on his forehead is now more of a grey color and has raised edges (maybe the outer white layer of his skin at that spot fell off?). In some ways, it's reminiscent of hole-in-the-head disease, but I'm wondering if that would just be a secondary infection due to whatever this primary issue is.
 
#34 ·
Try adding some sodium hydroxide to get it dissolved....

Mix 40g naoh with 1L of water then add it drop by drop to the dry powder...then dilute the whole thing into some distilled water.

Otherwise you could make a large batch of very dilute solution and perform a water change with the treated water (this method is by far safer and easier lol).
 
#35 · (Edited)
Dosing into my tanks a HOB method works if you have one. Place the meds behind a floss panel and the water flow will break it into solution in about 2 days. Getting the flu into solution and then into the water column is the biggest challenge of applying the treatment.

I settled on a combination of heat and alcohol after contact with Dr. Harrison.
Dosed dry the first time it took days for it to stop floating in the tank on the waters surface.

Alcohol (vodka) is mixed into the measured dose in a glass container. Only enough to make a paste or slurry out of the flu powder around 1ml more or less, just enough to wet it. Heating a cup of water to boiling in the microwave I wait until the boil settles then add the water in on top of the slurry. Some foaming occurs during the mixing but the majority of the material mixes very well doing this. The liquid is milky in the mixing cup and the tank becomes milky / cloudy but the dilution created by the tanks total volume seems to allow the chemicals to be absorbed into solution and remain suspended by all the evidence following a treatment. My tanks are clear the following morning. Fish have recovered every time I've used the treatment with the exception of two long infested adults. Those fish died with a bloody discharge seeping from the vent. Assuming to much internal damage due to long term exposure to the parasites is my belief. Those losses happened during initial treatment of my tanks when first learning about Flubendazole.

Many find the information being collected in my quarantine thread to be helpful. (this is posted there)
 
#36 ·
Thanks for the advice guys! As I said, I've already put the 2nd dose into the main tank (and will just have to keep stirring over the next couple days), but I'll definitely keep these ideas in mind when using it in the future. That HOB method sounds especially easy for dosing my new arrivals in QT.
 
#37 · (Edited)
DISASTER!!

The second dose of Flub is still going (nearly over) in the main tank (and everything seems fine, which makes the following that much more baffling):

I decided to use the flub on the new arrivals in my QT tank, as recommended in wkndracer's QT thread above. The QT is a 10gal mostly-bare tank (has some colored-glass pebbles covering the bottom, a couple of fake plants, and some frogbit floating about) with a heater and Tetra internal filter (cycled media from another tank). In QT, I had five ~2" Rainbows (3 Bosemani, 2 Turquoise) that I've had for over a week and were doing excellently by every measure I have (great color, appetite, activity level, normal poop, etc). 50% WC's were done every 2-3 days, with ammonia staying consistently low (not quite zero on my continuous-indication meter, but well below the next increment of 0.05ppm). I was not testing nitrite or nitrate because of the frequency of the WC's and how well the fish were doing.

Last night I did a 90% WC (per the flub instructions) and dosed the flub into the tank (may have been slightly overdosed, but by a really tiny amount like a 9.5-10gal dose in ~9gal of water volume). Took a while to get the flub to dissolve, but it did.

Here's where it gets weird:

On my main tank, after the flub dissolves, the water is clear. After the flub dissolved in the QT, the water was cloudy.

By morning, the water was still cloudy, but the rainbows seemed ok (however, they didn't have much of an appetite when I fed them). Charlie's instructions for the flub say to have "live wiggling or jumping food" for the fish as they recover, so I suspected that flub might cause a loss in appetite and began to wonder if I was doing something wrong with dosing the main tank, not that something was wrong in the QT.

When I got home from work this evening, I noticed the Rainbows were swimming at the top of the still-cloudy water and got concerned. I was trying to figure out if I should abort the treatment and do a WC or if I had time to post a thread and ask about it.

45 minutes later, I saw two rainbows laying upside-down on the substrate and not moving. I immediately jumped to action by netting all 5 fish and putting them into a guppy tank nearby, but it was too late for the two on the bottom. BTW, they look completely fine, even had good coloration when they died. The other three are stressed, but seem to be bouncing back.

A closer look at the water shows that it's not just cloudy, but there are long white stringy filaments floating about and clinging to the outlet of the filter (you can see it hanging off the fake plant in the picture). It's almost like a fungus you'd see grow on food left at the bottom of the tank, but there's way too much of it and it's too long to have grown overnight. None of this stuff was in the tank when I did the WC last night!

The presence of the white-stuff and how dense the cloudiness is leads me to doubt that it's a bacterial bloom from the large WC (and the slight bloom I had when I started the QT was far less than this). UPDATE: I just did a test on the water and couldn't even detect a trace of nitrite.

What could this be?! If it's related to the flub, I'm going to be far more hesitant to use it in the future.
 

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#38 ·
Wow and sorry to read this reported. Plz send Charles an email and ask him what he thinks but it looks like the dose was higher simply based on the amount of clouding captured in the picture. Every time I've dosed flu the tank has clouded but cleared overnight and the effect on water clarity was more a haze and not the heavy clouding I see here.
Did you have an air stone in the tank?
 
#39 ·
That's part of why I'm so baffled.

The dose being too high would explain the cloudiness (but considering there's zero haze in my main tank, this isn't the magnitude of effect one would see from a maybe-10% OD) or a lack of O2 suffocating the fish would explain the deaths (since there was no air stone, just the HOB), but neither would fit the explosive-growth of the white stringy material.

There's enough of it covering the bottom of the tank that I suspect it's the main cause of the cloudiness, but I can't figure out what it could be that it would take over the tank that quickly.
 
#40 ·
Five 2" Rainbows is not an insane number of fish but I don't have enough information on whats happened here to do anything but guess.
(and I've thought about it since reading the post)

What is your water source? Is it treated tap, was it aged? Did the large WC done pre-treat go normally?
The stringy material possibly released slim coat off the fish? Stressed fish can produce a ton of slime and any ammonia reading is always a bad thing.
7days plus with low ammonia readings mentioned did it spike at the end after adding the flu and the WC? Parameters can flip fast on small tanks and fungus growth can be explosive covering huge areas overnight so I wouldn't rule that out completely either.

again sorry you lost fish
 
#42 ·
After considerable thought and some feedback from Charles, my working theory is that suffocation was the cause of death of the fish. I couldn't find it in any of the articles or instructions that have been linked to, but apparently flub is an "oxygen scavenger."

I think what happened is that the filter on the QT (a Tetra internal model, I think it's the 30i) provides adequate circulation to aerate the water for the fish, but not enough for the fish+flub (especially at higher dosage levels, which leads me to the next point).

I also found out from Charles that the flub instructions linked to on wkndracer's QT thread are outdated, because since publishing them he's switched to a different supplier and is now selling flub in a 10% concentration, rather than 5% as before (he's currently working on an updated set of instructions to give out). Because of that, I ended up dosing my tanks at approximately 2x the normal amount (he mentioned that it's difficult to OD flub because it drops out of solution quickly when the temperature drops).

My main tank is still fine, with clear water and healthy occupants, but the oxygenation rate is substantially higher since it's only half full and my canister outflow is spraying against the back wall of the tank about 6 inches above the water level. The QT however, since it probably only had adequate aeration to begin with, wasn't able to cope with the oxygen scavenging level of a 2x flub dose (BTW, both tanks are kept at 78F).

So, the moral of the story: when dosing flub, ALWAYS use an airstone (even if aeration is normally adequate). Charles, please include this point in your new instruction set.

I still can't explain the white stuff, but wonder if it might be related to a mass death of the nitrifying bacteria due to the O2 levels.

I'll keep you posted on the progress of the main tank.
 
#43 ·
What was linked in my QT thread were articles published online by Charles as you say in your post. After reading your last post and what is the probable cause of your losses I reviewed all my posts in that thread with intent on removing ANYTHING that could cause harm or misunderstanding.

In post #18 I did detail what I settled on doing to aid in mixing flubendazole. Reviewing my thread I found he (Charles Harrison, Ph.D.) has already updated the linked information dated 12/16/2011. Included in it also is additional mixing instructions that all (imo) will find helpful.

I am NOT a vet or have I ever attended any medical training classes other than basic first aid and CPR training. Included in my QT thread it's stated that what I shared was based on my personal experiences and input mainly from breeder related websites. That information was spread out within the posts made. I have added an edit to the opening post of the thread in hope of avoiding misunderstandings.

I am truly sorry that trying to share information that I learned through hard lessons has led another person to deal with killing they're pets.
 
#44 ·
Please don't take any offense wkndracer: I never meant to imply that you had any role/blame for what happened in any way, shape, or form. I only meant to convey that you linked to the instructions Charles had posted (which were accurate at the time) and that in the time since you made the post, he's changed suppliers and the instructions had changed (which you would have no way of knowing).

Nor to I blame Charles: he'd included a quick summary of the instructions in an email, but I didn't notice the tiny detail of a change in recommended dosage (from 1/4 TSP per 5 gal to 1/4 TSP per 20 gal, which I'll admit I don't quite understand since he only went from 5% to 10%, unless he's also decided a weaker dose is equally effective). He had no way of knowing that I'd use the instructions linked to from your thread, so I wouldn't have expected him to say not to use them.

The responsibility in both cases is mine alone.

I wanted others to know that those instructions were out of date so that they wouldn't follow them like I did and so that they'd know that Charles was working on updating them. I also wanted others to know that flub is an O2 scavenger, since neither set of instructions mentioned it and I thought it an important detail. From now on, I'm always going to use an airstone when medicating (and even when not medicating on the QT) to ensure that aeration is never again a variable at play.
 
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