Sick fish isolated, worried about others. Several deaths over past few months.

[Cardeater]

Just wanted to update. I came back from that vet appointment. The staff was friendly despite some bad reviews. I feel better in that I did something and have a professional giving me a plan to follow. The Vet did a Gill, Fin and Mucous Cytology. Part of me wishes I brought the Dority male b/c it had white ick looking marks on it's tail. When I showed the pic, the Vet suspected that could be a parasite. I guess I could have had that fish analyzed but it would have cost double.

Vet Office discussion/findings:
From the green female, the Vet did not find any external parasites. She said its hard to tell if it could be cytomegalovirus or something worse and incurable like mycobacteria as someone had speculated before. I was giving Ceftazidime (Fortaz) to inject intramuscularly once every 3 days. The tech showed me how to do it. I grab the fish with gloves and/or a net, and inject this .01ml amount just into the muscle near side of spine by dorsal fin. The plan seems to be to see if this 7 treatment antibiotic does anything and recheck in 3 weeks.

If one of the fish dies, and I want answers, I can bring the body in or if one is really bad, just sacrifice the fish to be tested.

Testing & Cost effectiveness:
This is where it starts to be cost prohibitive to keep going down this path. The only reason I've been willing to even go see this fish vet is to figure out what is going on because I've just been going nuts worrying about it.

They have to call the lab for Cytomegalovirus test estimate but just the TB PCR for Mycobacterium would cost $348, plus the virus test.

The initial visit already cost $182. Just putting this so if anyone ever considers this route, they have an idea of cost. $78 for exam/consultation. $77 for Lab: Gill, Fin & Mucous Cytology. $20 Fortaz 50 mg/ml. $7 for insulin syringes.

I guess I'd be willing to spend this much to see if I have fish TB in the tank b/c that would mean I just wouldn't add anymore fish to my display. The vet even mentioned culling everything as a possible option to not risk my health or having fish with lesions suffer. If this ends up being the case, I think I'd just let my clown loaches live until they showed symptoms and just not add any more fish that could be infected.

Obviously, this isn't cost effective unless one has thousand dollar koi or stingrays or something. I figured piece of mind and my 29 year old clown loaches are worth figuring this out.

Swim Bladder rainbow:
Over the past few days, the scraped side rainbow was in the bottom corner. When I fed frozen food, I saw that he had developed a swim bladder issue and can't really move around. He'll probably die shortly as he couldn't or wouldn't even eat any of the frozen food pieces.

This is where I have to decide if I'd pay the $400 to get that fish tested. I'm thinking not as it doesn't have any symptoms right now. The columnaris back growth went away during the salt treatment.

If the green milleium female that is being treated with the antibiotics dies, I think I'll pay to have her tested since she is the one in the worst conditions with the lesions.

 

[amazontank]

Those are some sweet chunky clown loaches

 

[Cardeater]

Those are some sweet chunky clown loaches

Thank you.

 

[Cardeater]

View attachment 1545595

Bottom was before in above pics.

I'm paranoid about every mark I think I notice so keeping an eye on this. View attachment 1545596

I showed these two pics to the vet when I was there. She seemed to think I could leave the split tailed one in the main tank. If I really wanted to be cautious, I could move this female to quarantine but when I said it's just that mark she said I could just keep it watching it in the main tank

As I was looking the tank over, I noticed this older female has a red mark or lesion.

I'm starting to really worry this is fish TB as it fits the description of that article linked to me the aquarium coop forum. The older fish are the ones being hit the worse.(Older rainbows at least). The small female I was worried about is new, less than a year old. This one with a mark I just noticed now is also 5.5 years old like the "Red Guy," "Orange guy" and the green female that's on antibiotics.

 

[Cardeater]

Yeah, this Albino female seems to have whatever the green one has. At least I know it's right move to put her in QT with the others.



I'm gonna do the best I can but it's definitely hitting me that there might be a good chance I lose my tank to whatever is going on.

I think if I lose one of the fish wit the lesions, I'll pay to have them analyzed.

I gotta say that if I end up losing my clowns, I'll be out of the hobby. I don't think I could get over losing my almost 3 year old two clown loaches.

 

[phreeflow]

Hard to tell from your pics and have no clue how big the tank is or how stocked it is. First thing I would do is to keep the water quality as high as possible with large water changes, gravel vac, and clean out your filters.

If all your fish are getting affected, you’ll have to treat the whole tank. It might be stressing them more to pull out one at a time for QT.

Again, it’s hard to tell from the pics but it could be that your fish are showing signs of lymphocystis…is your tank overstocked? Regardless, even if it’s lymphocystis, there’s not much you can do but increase water quality and watch for secondary infections.

Also, I personally don’t think it’s worth paying to see if they have TB or herpes. Neither are easily treatable

 

[Cardeater]

Hard to tell from your pics and have no clue how big the tank is or how stocked it is. First thing I would do is to keep the water quality as high as possible with large water changes, gravel vac, and clean out your filters.

If all your fish are getting affected, you’ll have to treat the whole tank. It might be stressing them more to pull out one at a time for QT.

Again, it’s hard to tell from the pics but it could be that your fish are showing signs of lymphocystis…is your tank overstocked? Regardless, even if it’s lymphocystis, there’s not much you can do but increase water quality and watch for secondary infections.

Also, I personally don’t think it’s worth paying to see if they have TB or herpes. Neither are easily treatable

Thank you for the response. Any feedback helps and is appreciated.

My main tank is a 125g with 7 clown loaches, like 6-7 panda garra, and several rainbowfish (now I think there are only 8 left). I've always kept the nitrates under 20ppm (it might even be under 10. I could never really match the test strip, but once I went about a week and half and it was more readable so I think it's usually under 10) with weekly water changes and I've been doing every 4-5 days now. The QT tank has 6 fish in it now.

I think I would pay just so I know what's going on and if I Have fish TB, I know that I won't be buying a bigger tank like I wanted to for years, and that I won't be restocking since I have an incurable disease in the tank. I don't think I could just euthanize all the fish if that's the case. There were two articles that claimed with a UV sterilizer and just keeping water clarity up, they were able to have most of the fish survive that weren't displaying symptoms. I just bumped a thread where someone tried the large "Green Killing Machine" UV sterilizer. I'm not sure if that size/price range is even effective but it maybe worth a shot. (It seems like the truly effective ones cost more and are more complicated to set up. Plus that one seems to have many reviews where the product breaks before a year even passes).

These were the articles I found:
I found this:

Mycobacteriosis: the Stealth Disease | Tropical Fish Hobbyist Magazine

Mycobacteriosis is a highly contagious bacterial fish disease. Here's what we know about this tragic ailment.

www.tfhmagazine.com

and this article which I might have linked above (that someone linked to me on the Aquarium Co-op Forum)

Mycobacteriosis: The Ubiquitous Scourge of the Aquarist

Jen and Nora confer on mycobacteriosis (often called fish tuberculosis) in aquarium fish and offer recommendations for aquarists who are concerned about or dealing with these pervasive bacteria.

fishkeepandchill.com

From there:
Jen: It seems like all my clever ideas lately are related to the same piece of equipment! Before we get to that, we had to think through why her tank ended up having so much myco that the fish actually got sick from it, which as you pointed out, is certainly not always the case. Some contributing factors I noted and helped my friend correct were a slightly too-warm tank temperature which could amplify the growth of bacteria, accumulated organic detritus from driftwood and plants and suboptimal water quality for the platys, in conjunction with the general susceptibility of livebearers like platys to this bacteria.

The goal ultimately was not to eradicate the mycobacterium, since that is a fool’s errand, but to significantly reduce the amount of it in circulation so the fish’s immune systems could better handle it, and to correct some of the underlying contributing factors to support the fish’s immune systems. We had to accept that she’d have mycobacteria present, as most aquariums likely do, but make changes that could prevent her fish from succumbing to mycobacteriosis.

Once again, the fabulous mini UV filter came to the rescue. The idea is that by destroying some of the myco in circulation it can help keep the amounts in check relative to other common bacteria and give the fish a much better chance to fight it off. In conjunction with lowering the temperature slightly and improving water quality, culling the most severely affected fish so that they wouldn’t keep shedding large amounts of bacteria, and increased removal of detritus, the UV filter did do the trick. Since then, her fish seem healthy, are breeding, and she doesn’t lose any more than one might expect in an average aquarium. It made a huge difference. My opinion is that managing myco in an aquarium requires a multi-faceted approach. I’m not here to suggest that a UV filter is a cure-all.

I'll just end by saying that thus far, whatever is going on only seems to have affected the rainbowfish thus far (which is another worrying reason as the person who linked the second article said rainbowfish are especially susceptible to fish TB). The clowns and panda garra seem fine, but if the rainbows have fish TB, I guess the remaining fish are infected but not showing any symptoms.

 

[Cardeater]

Reading my initial vet visit report, I see that I missed a few things.

I guess it wasn't so bad that I didn't bring the dority. If I had paid for his exam, I guess I would know if these are external parasites, which is what the vet thought from this pic. I would have said it looks like ick except it isn't everywhere. I said as much and she said it could be another type of external parasite.



The other part of the treatment suggested was to bring the QT tank up to 85 degrees. I have had the fish in QT with 1 tablespoon per gallon of salt. The paperwork said to use 2 tsp per gallon, which would be 6.67 tablespoons per 10g. I had mentioned I already had this level and the vet said to reduce it to their recommendation as too much salt can be detrimental.

I just turned my air conditioner up so temp will slowly rise and I guess I have to find the heater I had in there as I'm not gonna want to be in 85 degrees heat in my condo for three weeks. Plus , I probably shouldn't have the main tank that hot. Clowns would be fine but rainbows in the main tank would be more stressed.

I think the Vet said if they had external parasites, the treatment would be similar to what we're doing now so this Dority might improve if he had external parasites somehow. (I never saw any signs of external parasites when the fish were in QT from Sept to Nov and then January).

 

[Cardeater]

I think I have to move this other female Millennium out too. I thought I saw something on her but was more focused on the one I removed yesterday. They both had the reddish tinge on the body and I assumed that's just how they looked when older as I think they've look like that for awhile. This mark by the bottom fin seems similar to the mark of the one I just took out yesterday.

The fins are supposed to be clear like this young one (still has that mark on side but it looks the same?)

 

[Cardeater]

Did another water change so I could catch that fish. My eye sight is bad so this looks like a solid red mark to me but with the camera it looks different than the one I took out yesterday.

This definitely isn't normal so I guess I needed to take her out.



Also since I'm doing another water change, I rinsed off the media in the whisper filter and move two big rocks so I could gravel vacuum underneath.