bloodlucky
Aquarium Advice FINatic
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2012
- Messages
- 900
I have posted maybe 5+ full essay length threads before, so I'll try to keep this summary to a minim but in short, an unidentified disease has caused probably around $75-100 of damage due to multiple failed attempts at medicating and losing exotic fish to it. It only infected one host at a time, as I could tell after watching maybe almost 20 fish die, that there was a pattern that only one would begin to "waste away" in the stomach until it was nothing but a shriveled carcass, and then the next fish would begin to waste away, then the next one, etc. It was recently brought to my attention by a user and a huge amount of research that it is most likely fish TB, which can infect humans as well and is pretty much unkillable unless you euthanize all fish and apply a special chemical that is designed for pretty much nuking everything alive, since not even bleach works on fish TB. Of course, the risk of "missing a spot" and having the disease start all over again after restarting your tank ($150+ of new uninfected equipment, nitrogen cycle, setting up) would make one consider just buying a whole new set up entirely, save the aquarium stand.
However, after losing so many fish to this disease, I could pretty much identify the disease in its earliest stages in a host, where barely anything looks wrong with the fish. I decided to quarantine an unlucky gold barb (the third one of its species to fall victim) and about a week and a half later, it died in quarantine with a completely inverted stomach. (Pic below)
This was about a month and a half ago, and strangely enough since then I haven't seen a single fish show any signs of any illnesses, of course by fish I mean the lucky 2 gold barbs (out of 5), 1 danio (out of 6), 1 neon (out of six) and 3 kuhli loaches who appear untouched the whole time. I decided to do some further research and I read somewhere (reliable) that the disease is transmitted by other fish pecking at the sick or deceased body, which would make sense since tuberculosis doesn't exactly "chase" it's subjects. The website also stated that out of sheer common sense, it's evident that one organism could be a fatal victim to the disease while all other members of the tank are completely unharmed, that is until it's someone else's "turn" to get TB. So putting the pieces together, I've concluded that it's likely that when I quarantined the gold barb about a month and a half ago before it was barely showing signs of sickness, the TB went with him, so although I didn't exactly "kill" TB I still managed to move it out of my primary tank. Like I said it's been a month and a half since then, but I'm reluctant to introducing new fish for two reasons, the first being that in the event that the disease is still in the tank, I don't want to be adding more victims, and the second reason being that I sort of want to start over my stock, start fresh. I've considered a few options. Assuming that I wait it out or a few more weeks and observe closely for any signs of TB and the coast is clear I could consider
1. Turning in all my "rescued" fish to LFS near my area and look into a new stock
2. (My less favorite option) wait until all the fish just die of old age, I guess, but downsides would be that there would be an inadequate number of each species of schooling fish in the tank, and I would be stuck with a miserable handful of random survivors of practically an apocalypse.
3. (Most extreme, but completely annihilates risk of TB relapse) euthanize all surviving fish, throw out all equipment and start from scratch.
This is a very tough situation. As you can see pretty much every solution has a downside. If I add fish, I put the survivors back into adequate schooling numbers but I risk the chance of giving TB even more victims in the off chance it's still in my tank. If I don't add fish and wait it out until everyone dies out of other causes, the survivors will be miserable until then. If I euthanize everything there's a huge chance in putting perfectly healthy lives to an end. I really don't know what to do from here.
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However, after losing so many fish to this disease, I could pretty much identify the disease in its earliest stages in a host, where barely anything looks wrong with the fish. I decided to quarantine an unlucky gold barb (the third one of its species to fall victim) and about a week and a half later, it died in quarantine with a completely inverted stomach. (Pic below)
This was about a month and a half ago, and strangely enough since then I haven't seen a single fish show any signs of any illnesses, of course by fish I mean the lucky 2 gold barbs (out of 5), 1 danio (out of 6), 1 neon (out of six) and 3 kuhli loaches who appear untouched the whole time. I decided to do some further research and I read somewhere (reliable) that the disease is transmitted by other fish pecking at the sick or deceased body, which would make sense since tuberculosis doesn't exactly "chase" it's subjects. The website also stated that out of sheer common sense, it's evident that one organism could be a fatal victim to the disease while all other members of the tank are completely unharmed, that is until it's someone else's "turn" to get TB. So putting the pieces together, I've concluded that it's likely that when I quarantined the gold barb about a month and a half ago before it was barely showing signs of sickness, the TB went with him, so although I didn't exactly "kill" TB I still managed to move it out of my primary tank. Like I said it's been a month and a half since then, but I'm reluctant to introducing new fish for two reasons, the first being that in the event that the disease is still in the tank, I don't want to be adding more victims, and the second reason being that I sort of want to start over my stock, start fresh. I've considered a few options. Assuming that I wait it out or a few more weeks and observe closely for any signs of TB and the coast is clear I could consider
1. Turning in all my "rescued" fish to LFS near my area and look into a new stock
2. (My less favorite option) wait until all the fish just die of old age, I guess, but downsides would be that there would be an inadequate number of each species of schooling fish in the tank, and I would be stuck with a miserable handful of random survivors of practically an apocalypse.
3. (Most extreme, but completely annihilates risk of TB relapse) euthanize all surviving fish, throw out all equipment and start from scratch.
This is a very tough situation. As you can see pretty much every solution has a downside. If I add fish, I put the survivors back into adequate schooling numbers but I risk the chance of giving TB even more victims in the off chance it's still in my tank. If I don't add fish and wait it out until everyone dies out of other causes, the survivors will be miserable until then. If I euthanize everything there's a huge chance in putting perfectly healthy lives to an end. I really don't know what to do from here.
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