# I think my tank has TB



## Jaguar

My fish have been slowly dying off one by one, in the past 6 months, many from another forum suggested fish TB...










4 zebra danios got thin, spines curved, tummies sucked in and eventually death

3 blue rams wasted away or died randomly

one dwarf gourami died of severe bloat and impaction (no pineconing like dropsy)

one platy died randomly, no symptoms, fine one day dead the next

3 neon tetras died with kinked spines/tails

2 otos got thin and eventually disappeared

my stock is all from the Kelowna area so just want to stress the importance of QT and proper tank care, especially if you get stock from Kelowna... I have always been very good about both but some things you just cant predict I guess.

I cannot have my bare hands in the tank, i cannot add, remove, or move fish out of this tank... i cannot sell any of the plants that are taking over my tank...

I am not sure where the affected fish came from but I can say this has been absolutely devastating... be careful


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## Flygirl

So sorry to hear this. I can only imagine haw devastating this has to be. Hope you are able to see an end to this soon and start with a clean tank and new healthy fish and plants. 

~~~Hugs~~~


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## Rastapus

Jaguar said:


> My fish have been slowly dying off one by one, in the past 6 months, many from another forum suggested fish TB...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 4 zebra danios got thin, spines curved, tummies sucked in and eventually death
> 
> 3 blue rams wasted away or died randomly
> 
> one dwarf gourami died of severe bloat and impaction (no pineconing like dropsy)
> 
> one platy died randomly, no symptoms, fine one day dead the next
> 
> 3 neon tetras died with kinked spines/tails
> 
> 2 otos got thin and eventually disappeared
> 
> my stock is all from the Kelowna area so just want to stress the importance of QT and proper tank care, especially if you get stock from Kelowna... I have always been very good about both but some things you just cant predict I guess.
> 
> I cannot have my bare hands in the tank, i cannot add, remove, or move fish out of this tank... i cannot sell any of the plants that are taking over my tank...
> 
> I am not sure where the affected fish came from but I can say this has been absolutely devastating... be careful


Can you provide some water parameters? Fish like Zebra Danios are virtually bullet proof, I suspect the water is a contributor. Fish TB often only affects one fish.


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## Jaguar

My water params are fine... ph 7.6 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 0 (cyano sucks up all my nitrates). Water is not particularly hard because of the source here.

Tank is 33 gallons, I do 20% WCs once a week. Filter is an Eheim Ecco 2234 with an additional powerhead with sponge filter, heavily planted, stock is pretty light... 

The danios were hit the hardest and I have read they are particularly sensitive to mycobacterium. One of them is still alive, a female full of eggs... they spawned a lot even through the disease.


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## Morainy

Very, very sorry to hear this, Jaguar. A tragedy for any aquarist. 

I don't have the skills to diagnose fish TB but that fish does look very sick. It's considerate of you not to rehome any of the plants: good thinking. Have you tried any medications? TB is reportedly very hard to treat, but maybe if it's an internal parasite? (I don't have any reason to think it is... kind of a last ditch thought.)


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## Jaguar

I have medicated multiple times for parasites with no results 

I have also looked up possible treatment methods but they all seem like a shot in the dark. At this point, I'm just going to let it run its course and see if I can start over later. I can't bring myself to euthanize the entire tank because the leftover fish (other than one of the neons that looks dreadful but still wants to live) are doing well.


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## TomC

I had a similar situation a couple of years ago, but my best guess was neon tetra disease. It got into all 3 tanks. Some fish were fine, and others died one by one over a period of a year or so.

Eventually I set up a tank outside for the summer and put all the sick and not-so-valued fish there, after a double course of antibiotics. I only kept a group of cories and plecos that I really liked and were without symptoms. Then I removed and sterilized gravel in all 3 tanks, and gave the plants a 5% bleach bath. The disease never returned.

The sick fish outside died, and the not-so-valued healthy ones survived. I chanced putting them back into my tanks and things worked out. Like you, I didnt want to euthanize, and nobody wants sick fish. The easier course is to just tear it all down and sterilize, but then you are left with fish that may be carriers.

I would suggest keeping only the entirely healthy fish, and tearing the tank down. Maybe just keep the new set up as simple as possible for a few months. At a very minimum I would change the gravel.


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## Rastapus

Jaguar said:


> My water params are fine... ph 7.6 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 0 (cyano sucks up all my nitrates). Water is not particularly hard because of the source here.
> 
> Tank is 33 gallons, I do 20% WCs once a week. Filter is an Eheim Ecco 2234 with an additional powerhead with sponge filter, heavily planted, stock is pretty light...
> 
> The danios were hit the hardest and I have read they are particularly sensitive to mycobacterium. One of them is still alive, a female full of eggs... they spawned a lot even through the disease.


I am not familiar with Cyanobacteria using Nitrate as a food source. May be the test kit you are using. Are you adding anything for GH? If your GH is very low like it is in the lower mainland this can contribute to the emaciation of the fish, particularly if they are still giving birth and looking like that. The wasting away symptom and the bloating is also signs of low GH.


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## Jaguar

Cyano thrives in low nitrate conditions. My test kit is new, just bought it from Big Als about 3 months ago now... I cannot find powdered KNO3 locally and I can't buy anything online right now unfortunately, or I would be dosing it... I had another thread about it going but I'm just too far in debt right now to buy anything other than absolute necessities.

GH here is not super low, about 120ppm when I called City of Kelowna late last year. The pH out of the tap is really high, like 8.2, but once it gases off for a while it drops to about 7.6.


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## Nicole

How much KNO3 do you need? I will see how much it costs me to send it to you.


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## AquaSox

I would guess like Tom that it is neon tetra disease, but it could be many others too.

If you've got a complex setup you may not want to tear it down. Try to find the source of the problem the best you can. If not I would just euthanize all of the affected fish and perhaps restock with resistant ones. IMO I would steer well clear of neon tetras....I've always got the dam neon tetra disease regardless of good water parameters. Like you said the place where you got them from may have been the source.

Sometimes you can do everything and still get problems...I had a similar situation in one of my tanks.


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## Jaguar

My first thought was NTD before too, but folks on TPT didn't believe it was disease, just poor stock... i actually had a massive die off in quarantine but it was completely my own fault for not being prepared. These 3 surviving neons have been in the tank for 5 months now and they were doing great until about last week when one of them started getting white sores on his back end, and now has a kink in his tail :/

The only fish that have been completely unaffected by this disease are my black skirt tetras, none of them have ever shown any sign of any illness and they were the first fish in my tank. They are monsters and spawn regularly... and my harlequin rasboras seem to be avoiding it as well.

Left in my tank is

9x harlequin rasbora
5x black skirt tetra
2x german blue ram
3x neon tetra
1x red wag platy
1x dwarf gourami
1x zebra danio

Other than the one affected neon, everyone else seems to be doing fine.










I know pigment loss is a sign of NTD but these look more like raised sores, but not quite like columnaris.... its hard to describe

PSpades - I don't know how much KNO3 I would need, I was just going to buy maybe a pound and see if it helped at all with the cyano. It's really hard to want to keep going during a cyano takeover combined with an unknown fish disease... I have had an ADA 60-P sitting here since Christmas and I am scared to death to set it up and watch it fail miserably.


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## Morainy

Oh, it's too bad that you have problems with your fish and cyano at the same time. Disheartening. Maybe it's a good time to start up your ADA 60-P after all, so that you have one fresh, happy tank? 

Some people have successfully treated cyano with antibiotics. I think CRS_Fan recommends that sometimes, Erythromycin I think. Maybe a dose of antibiotics, combined with some siphoning, might get rid of the cyano and not do your fish any harm. 

I was reading about cyanobacteria in Scientific American recently. Apparently, in the desert it's very useful for retaining nutrients in the soil. It has lots of interesting capabilities and if you read about what it does outside the tank, it doesn't seem so much an enemy anymore as an intelligent alien species that's dropped by to say hi. 

Maybe in some ways, it's not bad for a tank (if unsightly). Cyanobacteria usually thrives when the nitrates are high and as it gobbles up the nitrates, maybe your test will register artificially low. If you can, I'd suggest washing your gravel if it's become full of mulm and such, or at least vacuuming the top inch, covering the tank for a couple of days, and doing largish water changes because dying cyanobacteria will stink. 

After treating your tank with Erythromycin, if you choose to do that, or just vacuuming, I'd recommend putting in some fast-growing plants like water lettuce, wisteria, Elodea or hornwort, to gobble up the nitrates, until your water is in balance again. I have some of most of these plants, if you wish. You don't have to plant them, you can just drop them in and pull them out later. (My water lettuce comes with a duckweed booster, though...)

Good luck with your fish. I recently lost some corydoras to an infection that took them one by one, slowly, and so I know how sad it feels to be helplessly watching your fish die despite your best efforts. That's why I think it's the perfect time to set up your other, new tank (but don't share any of the equipment between them).


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## Jaguar

I know EM takes care of it but it's so dang expensive. I wanted to find the source of the problem... I think it was brought in with some plants I bought, at what point I don't know, but... it just flourished and took over absolutely everything. I know it's not dangerous, but it's so thick it's starting to choke light to my plants.

I have a sand substrate so mulm isn't too bad of an issue. I did a big tank teardown just over a month ago, but I cut back my plant load quite a bit and the cyano just came back with a vengeance after that.

yuck!


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## Morainy

I have a box of Erythromycin that I just keep on hand and have no plans for. It has individual pouches of powder that each treat 10 gallons. A complete cycle of treatment is 4 doses (for disease, probably less for cyano). If you PM me your mailing address, I will mail you 4 pouches of the powder. If you send the PM this morning, I can even take this to the post office this afternoon, when I go to the bank to deposit my brother's pay cheques. You might even have the envelope by Friday.


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## Jaguar

I really appreciate the offer, but I've started to do a blackout and will also start dosing KNO3 soon, someone local to me was ordering some from the coast and got me an extra pound. If that doesn't take care of it I'll contact you though!


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