Tb Or Ntd Or Something Else?

[blue_ram]

I posted on the different forum last week about my newly bought Cardinals not eating for over two weeks. Other than not eating, they seemed pretty normal. So after the quarantine period, I integrated them in my main aquarium. Over the thanksgiving, I lost all of them. Not even as a beginner have I lost all the fish. The water parameters are excellent; no NH3 or NO2, 8-10 ppm NO3, 1ppm PO4. The water quality in the quarantine tank that they were in was even better. What bothers me right now is that I can't seem to nail down the cause, and these fishes were in added to my main aquarium. I'm hoping that whatever they had didn't get to spread to other inhabitants.

Looking at the dead fishes, all of them seemed to suffer from fin rot. But I'm pretty sure that's NOT the cause of their death. Some of them barely show any deterioration in their fins. It's more likely that the fin rot was a secondary infection. One of them that was still alive (for a while) showed a sign of necrosis in their rear 1/4 of the body; the tail end of the blue band was gray. Not slimy/fuzzy gray, but scaless, dead tissue gray. The fish clearly had trouble swimming, and was swimming nose down. I've had Neon Tetra Disease before, but it took a lot longer than 3 days to kill the neons, and Cardinals are supposed to be resistant to it. So I would think it would take even longer, unless their immune system were compromised (possibly due to stress?). But that fish showed some of the symptoms of TB as well.

What do you think? NTD? TB? or something else? If any other fish in the tank starts to show similar symptoms, I may have to think about euthanizing them.

 

[WILDER]

Was the grey patch slimey looking, could be dealing with a bacterial infection or parasites, any laboured breathing or flicking and rubbing against objects, or did they twitch like something was irratating them, did they speed around the tank, ntd usually start of with a bleached out colour in the red stripe, the finrot same as you say could of been a secondary infection.

 

[blue_ram]

Was the grey patch slimey looking, could be dealing with a bacterial infection or parasites, any laboured breathing or flicking and rubbing against objects, or did they twitch like something was irratating them, did they speed around the tank, ntd usually start of with a bleached out colour in the red stripe, the finrot same as you say could of been a secondary infection.

No, the gray patch didn't look slimy at all. It looked more like dead tissue. Infact it was missing scales. The fish didn't show any symptoms of external parasites either. I'm hoping that it's not an NTD, because that would really be a problem both for my fish and plants. I guesss I'll have to give a closer look at the rest of the fish this weekend. Thanks for the opinion wilder.

 

[littleimp]

Have you used medications or salt in the main tank at all??

 

[WILDER]

Dosn't sound like ntd to me so fingers crossed.

http/freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/neondisease.htm

 

[blue_ram]

Have you used medications or salt in the main tank at all??

No medications yet. If it's NTD , there's nothing that I can do. I've found that medications often do more harm than good, if used improperly. Until I know the cause of their death for sure, I think I'll hold off the medication in the main tank.