WOW andy, are you sure?
This one really had me stumped for along time.
Thanks for that great info, could you elaborate if you feel like talking abit about it? I'd really appreciate it, as well as pass the word along.
Symptoms on mine as well as others were.....
-Skinny fish with chronic illness
-Swimming under food, taking a bite and spitting it out
-New additions would bloat and die within 2 weeks
-Stringy feces
-Red Dots
-Some had tail rot
-Paralysis "whirling" right before death
I never observed bent spines. I got some "wild guppies" from this one J$$K guy who turned out to be some teenager selling fish on AB, and i had this disease wipe out idk how many guppies, almost put me out of the hobby completely. Even took a sick fish to the vet for Autospy....they noticed alot of mucus in its gut but no worms or internal parasites.
All those symptoms could be a couple of different ailments but an autopsy result of no worms or internal parasites eliminates most of them and points more towards a bacterial infection ( which TB is) and the fact that the new fish you added became sick too really points to a system wide issue and not a localized internal one.
In the past, one of the more common post mortem signs of TB was a brown coloring in the abdominal area. If you saw that, you knew to treat the entire tank and sterilize everything that had come in contact with that tank and fish. Today, this may not be as clear as there are new strains and effect fish differently. All the symptoms you mentioned could be linked to a bacterial infection so the fish does not have to have all of them for it to be considered TB.
Internet research is okay but I strongly suggest you have books ( not just ebooks
) in your library so you can research and diagnose your fish's ailments. I highly recommend this book: Handbook of fish diseases by Untergasser ( get the english version unless you can read and understand German
) as a great diagnostic tool. It's available on a number of sites and not super expensive ( I got mine on Ebay used
) and has a grid "If this, then go to this step" approach for diagnosing issues. What's nice about this book is that if you are uncertain, you can look through and pose a different scenario and then see if what you are seeing better fits something else. ( I was able to diagnose the sleeping disease in one of my Angels this way.)
Sadly, this is part of animal keeping. Diseases happen and it happens more when the fish are stressed. Overcrowding, poorer diets, poorer water conditions, etc all leave fish stressed to some point. So while you may feel the tank is "healthy", the fish are really the ones that tell you whether it is or isn't.
As for your experience with the wild Guppies, just another example of why it is sooooooooo important to QT all fish coming into your tanks for an extended period of time. This will allow most problems to surface so they can be treated before exposing your main tank to them. Ever wonder why zoos and aquariums QT their animals for MONTHS before they let them into their exhibits? THIS is why.
Hope this helps.