Dying Fish - So Thin They Look Like Swimming Skeletons!

[wodesorel]

Dealing with something I'm afraid may be contagious. I've lost 9 danios slowly starting about a month ago. Lost one white cloud minnow two weeks ago. Everything has been fine for the past week. Have two more white cloud minnows now showing symptoms. I thought it was the large aggressive female danio harrassing and killing the other fish, but she's been moved out and the white clouds have just started showing signs.


Tank size: 20 gallon
pH: 8.2
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 20ppm
kH: 300ppm
gH: 300ppm
tank temp: 78F

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior):

Fish suddenly getting very emaciated within a day or two - sunken in sides and stomach. Seems to show a slight arch in the middle of the back, but it may be due to loss of weight. Fins slightly clamping the next day. Fish gets a bit pale and stops being active the following day. Death occuring a day or so after that. They ARE eating during this time. There are no signs of leasions, sores, worms. They look like a perfectly healthy fish except for the sunken abdominal area.

Volume and Frequency of water changes:
1/4 once a week. With the first sick fish (three of them at once) I did a 3/4 water change fearing it was ammonia or nitrite and had no test strips in the house to confirm it.

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank:
Use Prime to condition. Have one carbon insert in the filter and two foam inserts.

Tank inhabitants:
At the moment, 5 white cloud minnows and 7 black kuhli loaches.

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration):
8 danios five months ago, all but one dead. 6 white cloud minnows two weeks ago, one dead immediately.

Exposure to chemicals:
None, tank is in bedroom.

Please help! I want to add more white clouds but am afraid to until I know what's going on! I do feed a mix of foods and know even the sick fish have been eating. They get a mix of Wardley flake and pellet, frozen bloodworms and brineshrimp.

Thank you!

 

[Spooky76]

Hey - well at least your waters not the problem.
Sounds like an internal bacterial problem. Thinning of fish can be TB, parasites etc.
Are they pooping normally ?
I would cut out the bloodworm, feed peas and daphnia.
I would suggest starting with an internal bacterial medication, but might be worth waiting to see if wilder has got a better idea (Which is likely).

 

[WILDER]

Alot of internal parsites thread at the moment.
When the fish go to the toilet is it long white and stringy.
Check the anus of the fish to see if its enlarged or red and inflamed.
How many fish are skinny with a with a bent spine.
Also can you see any worms prutruding from the anus.

 

[omega59]

yes it appears alot of people including myself, are dealing with parasites. I have to agree this does sound like it is a parasite. HI Wilder

 

[WILDER]

Hi Omega59.

 

[wodesorel]

Thanks Wilder, Spooky76, and omega59 for responding.

Nope, no signs of parasites. No hanging worms, normal defecation, no swelling or redness of the anal region. Parasite was my first thought, but I've had bettas in the past with worms and it took a few weeks before they showed signs of thinning, not to mention actually seeing the worms hanging out and the redness around their bums. These guys go from a normal weight to skeleton in a matter of 2 days. I've been watching since it started because when I see skinny, I do think parasites. (I worked in cat rescue, and it's just kinda automatic now - skinny = worms/illness.)

The only reason I don't feed daphnia is because the fish won't eat them! Even just a few frozen ones in the tank will end up clogging the filter, and it makes a mess and causes the ammonia to spike. I keep my tank clean, but I don't want to be messing around with it on a daily basis. I will get some peas and try them, but I have never had a fish show interest in them before. (Been using thawed and shucked peas.)

I honestly thought it was something limited to the danios. I got four of the specialty long-finned danios in yellow and four of the blues. When they started dying, I chalked it up to them not being as hardy since they were a hybredized danio. But then I lost two regular danios (who had been with me for about a year) and a white cloud to the same symptoms, and I realized it had nothing to do with that.

Then I thought it was stress from being chased by the largest and only surviving danio. She was three times the size of the others and is probably five times the size of the white clouds. She's enormous! (She was spawning every two weeks, so I know it's a she.) But she's been out of the tank for a few days, and the white clouds just started to show the thinning yesterday.

The disfigurement of the spine is a very very slight ^ shape. I had thought about it being TB, but I don't know if that would fit the symptoms exactly or not. The loaches are showing no signs of illness, but they've always been immune to everything.

What would be a better idea to treat for? TB since I think it leans more that way with the symptoms they are having, or parasites since that would be a more common ailment even though they aren't showing direct signs of having them? I overdid it with meds when I first started fishkeeping and did way more harm than good, so I've been staying away from all meds and have just relied on clean tanks with good water parameters since to correct any illness or infection. Seeing as how that isn't working with this problem and this is infecting new fish, I know I have to use something. I'm really not sure where to start, what would be the safest med, or if I should just let things go and they'll correct themselves eventually.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Wasting disease. Treat with levamisole or flubendazole. Neither is easy to find. They are often available as pig dewormers in feed and grain stores if you cant find them elsewhere. Also look here (scroll down) undefined

 

[wodesorel]

Okay, another white cloud is on the verge of dying. This one does have small red open sores on it's sides. I would euthanize it, but I've never been personally able to decide on a humane method, so I would rather let nature take it's course.

So, to recap with new symptoms:

Day 1 to 2 : Fish suddenly shrinking from normal weight to skeleton
Day 3: Fins clamping, becomes slow
Day 4: Pale skin, paralyzation, floating on back or spinning in circles. Death.

I have the dying one and one that is very thin quarentined to a cup for the night because I have no where else to put it.

I believe the remaining danio is becoming thin as well - she's in a separate tank.

Any ideas? I have a vet we know very well, so we can probably get the meds we would need to treat these fish. If they can be treated.

Thanks!

 

[wodesorel]

Okay, another white cloud is on the verge of dying. This one does have small red open sores on it's sides. I would euthanize it, but I've never been personally able to decide on a humane method, so I would rather let nature take it's course.

So, to recap with new symptoms:

Day 1 to 2 : Fish suddenly shrinking from normal weight to skeleton
Day 3: Fins clamping, becomes slow
Day 4: Pale skin, paralyzation, floating on back or spinning in circles. Death.

I have the dying one and one that is very thin quarentined to a cup for the night because I have no where else to put it.

I believe the remaining danio is becoming thin as well - she's in a separate tank.

Any ideas? I have a vet we know very well, so we can probably get the meds we would need to treat these fish. If they can be treated.

Thanks!


Edit: Okay, dying fish is dead. Post-mortum showed two open sores on stomach area, a slight red rash in a verticle line runing from spine to stomach located between dorsal fin and tail. No visible disfigurement of spine. Skin on stomach loose probably from rapid wieght loss, gills pale (expected after death). No parasites visible on the external examination. No parasites visible in gills. No worms seem to be present in intestinal tract. Granted, I did the best I could with a fish that was an inch and a half long and a razorblade....

I'm going to assume at this point it is Fish TB since it is a "wasting disease" and because now the sores are apparant. I will not euthanize the current fish. The other three white clouds ate well this evening and look perfectly healthy. The loaches are fine as always, and five of them I've had for 2 years now. However, to prevent problems and to hopefully be able to add more fish in the future, I will be treating the tank.

My fiance is good friends with two vets. He's going to contact them both tomorrow to see if they are able to treat fish and can prescribe Kanamycin for the tank. I still have one fish left that can go in for culturing. If not, I'll try the OTC Erythomycin.

Has anyone else had luck treating for TB?

 

[WILDER]

Found some info yesterday on danio they can slowly get a bent spine in old age, which I never knew.
You could be looking at fish tb if some fish have sores on there body and they are very thin.
You can't prove its tb but I leave you a link to see what you think.
Seem to see alot of danio with fish tb.
Do a search on tb and danio's.
[URL="http/www.torrens.org.uk/NatHist/Aqua/disease/tb.html"]http/www.torrens.org.uk/NatHist/Aqua/disease/tb.html[/URL]

 

[wodesorel]

Yeah, that was one of the websites I found where I guessed it was fish TB.

Still up in the air on whether to treat or not to treat. From what I've read seems to affect all cyprinids, but scavangers and preditors seem to have a natural immunity. I don't know if that means that the loaches are immune, but then they will be carriers? And I'm not going to kill off the loaches!

I've got the only white cloud that is currently showing symptoms separated, and I'm guessing that it will be dead by the end of the night.

It's back end is paralyzed, so when it stops swimming it starts sinking tail-end first. Haven't noticed that before, but I didn't really keep a close eye on the others becuase it was kind of upsetting and I was hoping it would just go away. I think that's where the ^ shape is coming from - it can't move the tail end of it's body past the top of the arch.

We talked to both vets - one has worked on large fish (removing tumours and such), but is not familiar with small tanks. Neither has kanamycin, either, and I don't know if you can get that from a human pharmacy, or how much it would cost!

That and I can't find accurate dosage information online. For a 20 gallon tank I'm finding that you need 200 to 500 mg, but it doesn't specify if that's the amount of kanamycin per dose, or the amount of a pre-mixed solution. If it's a solution, what's mg/ml of the kanamycin in that?! Also, I'm finding recommendations of treating between 10 days and 3 months..... Gee...

Are there any realiable resources out there, or is this just a "sit back and wait to see what happens" problem?

 

[Spooky76]

I cant find any more than you have after searching google for 10 mins...sorry

Sounds like a sit back and hope they can pull through it OK. As you say nature will take its cause, just hope it doesnt take all your fish with it though !

 

[wodesorel]

After really looking into it.... I think I have an idea about what might be happening:

I didn't realize that white clouds are cold water creatures. The tank had been around 82 degrees for the past couple of months - when I moved I did not reset the heater - mom's house was set at 65 degrees, my house is set around 72 degrees. So when the heater kicked on in the cold whether, it was keeping the tank way too warm. I've since started lowering the temperature a degree a day so I can ease them into it. I've been really sick myself for about six months, and have a lot of memory problems, so I never even though to check the freaking heater. The really sick white cloud is still alive, and I think it's because I've moved him out of the tank into a cup, and have him in the coldest area of the house, which is around 65 degrees (mainly just to keep him out of reach of the felines, not for the cold temp). He's still extremely active though not eating yet. Needless to say, I'm sure they were highly STRESSED.

The danios had been harrassed by the largest of the group, who was really really aggressive. She chased all of them about. I knew danios were semi-aggressive, but I thought there was a large enough group to spread the abuse around. I'm now second guessing that decission. Needless to say, I'm sure they were all really STRESSED.

From the research I've done, it seems like fish TB is really similiar to a number of feline diseases (which I unfortunately know way too much about). There seems to be a lot of conflicting opinions of what to do. The best I can put together is that mycobacterium is present in most water/fish/aquariums, but that stress is what causes an active outbreak.

The question is once the outbreak occurs, do the fish and the environment then infect every new fish that is added to the infected aquarium? That seems to be what no one can figure out. Half of the research and user's posts I've found said to kill all the fish, bleach and sterilize everything and then restock. But according to the research, bleaching doesnt actually kill the mycobacterium becuase it's so hardy. Then why go through all the trouble in the first place? The other half say to treat with *x* antibiotic and you'll only loose a few fish and the tank will go back to normal and not to ever add any more fish so they don't get infected. Again, if it can only infect stressed fish, then why should healthy fish not be given another chance?

This sounds a lot like feline herpes virus, only that's not even close to fatal in cats. It can however be a stress induced illness, and it is extremely contagious. Also, it's been estimated that something like 80% of all cats have or have had one strain of this illness. Vets cannot agree on how the virus is spread - is it only when the cat is showing symptoms, or can the cat be a carrier for the rest of it's life even when it's healthy? Okay, so does this mean every cat has to be quarentined for it's entire life? Of course not! Common sense has to be used and symptoms have to be managed as they occur. Sure some cats are going to catch it, some cats are going to be immune, and it'll come and go in waves.

I don't know if I'm wrong in thinking this, but I'm going to take the same approach with this tank. I'll be careful to only buy fish that won't be stressed by the water conditions (if the last three white clouds handle the lower water temps and make it, then I'll stick with them, if not, I'll have to find something else), and I'll be careful to keep the stress levels as low as possible in regards to stocking, and I'll make sure to feed good varied diet (which I think I'm doing aready).

I will wait a few weeks to add new fish, and will closely watch what's going on. I have a vet on standby in case I need a supply of antibiotics to treat the tank if it comes to that. I'm very hands-off with my cats with most eye infections, becuase the antibiotics don't work most of the time. I don't know why I should rush to treat my tank when the best thing is to probably just assume the most logical conclusion (stressed fish = dead fish, healthy fish = alive fish) and let things run it's course. Mycobacterium seem to be inpossible to treat or kill, so why not just manage them since it's already there? I won't be cruel and I won't be exposing huge numbers of fish, I'll start adding slowly, and at the first sign of trouble, then I'll reconsider this decision.

So the only problem is that like I mentioned before, I've been sick and I might not be thinking all that clearly... So is this just a really really stupid decision to come to, or does it seem like at least something that should be given a shot?

 

[WILDER]

Treat for 30 days also vitamin tablets will get you the dosage as you say it can be from 250mg to 500mg.
[URL="http/www.fishyfarmacy.com/articles/mycobacteriosis.html"]http/www.fishyfarmacy.com/articles/mycobacteriosis.html[/URL]

Kanamycin Gram negative bacteria resistant strains of tuberculosis. (questionable value since it has been over used and mis-used by hobbyist) 1/4 teaspoon per 20 gallons of water

 

[NIXI]

Alot of internal parsites thread at the moment.
When the fish go to the toilet is it long white and stringy.
Check the anus of the fish to see if its enlarged or red and inflamed.
How many fish are skinny with a with a bent spine.
Also can you see any worms prutruding from the anus.

Good morning WILDER
Please excuse my amature question but I am fairly new at this, how would I know if my fish have worms and /or parasites?
I have a similar problem with my danios as well, and sometimes my koi

thanks
Nixi