neon dead from NTD

[toadie]

About a month ago I euthanized a neon because it had NTD. Last week - after being gone for the weekend - I came home to find my mystery snail missing. Well, sort of. The shell was still there, but the snail must have been eaten by the fish either as its cause of death or after it had already died. The snail seemed fine when I left, but I don't know much about them so it's hard to say for sure. Over the last couple of days one of my corys stopped eating and seemed just to lounge in the back corner on the sandy beach. This morning it was dead and appeared to have been nibbled on. The harlequin rasboras and black skirt tetras all seem nervous and not so greedy to eat as before. Am I losing all my fish to NTD? What do I do now? I've been changing about 25% of the water 2-3 times a week ever since the snail got eaten.

Ammonia and nitrite at 0 ppm. pH is 7.5 (seems to be inching toward 8.0; tap water is closer to 7.0- anybody know why? how do I bring it back down?) Tank has a few live plants; mostly gravel with 2 sandy areas for the corys.

29 gallon tank with 9 neons, 3 black skirts, 5 rasboras, 2 corys, 2 leopard plecos.

 

[WILDER]

Ntd is an awful desease and can wipe a tank out as iv'e had it, best thing to do is strip the tank down and sterlise everything.

 

[toadie]

Ntd is an awful desease and can wipe a tank out as iv'e had it, best thing to do is strip the tank down and sterlise everything.

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To sterilize the tank.... keep the fish in a bucket (heated and circulating)? Do I keep any of the old water, or should I net the fish and put them into water that is potentially quite different once the tank has been cleaned? My pH has been climbing and is getting close to 8.0 while the tap water is between 7.0 and 7.5. What about cycling? Should I replace the biowheel filters?

Your position is that my snail and cory died from NTD and that I'm going to lose the rest of the fish, right? NTD is caused by a sporozoan and the disease/spores are only able to survive in the tissue of a fish - eating, or pecking at an infected fish is the primary cause for spread of the disease? So, even if I sterilize the tank, the fish may still have the spores/parasite in their body and I'm back in the same place - especially since it looks like the fish ate the snail and appeared to have picked at the dead cory - do snails get NTD? Does the disease/do the spores survive in the gravel, filter, water, etc?

No matter what I do, my fish are doomed? AARGGH.

 

[WILDER]

Yes if the fish have pecked at infected fish yes they are doomed, it's awful been in your position, do you have any more tank as i sterlised everything and started up again using my other tanks.