Minnow With Tuberculosis?

Hello, I recently noticed my white cloud mountain minnow hid a bit of a bent spine and had stopped eating. I checked with a google search and I found out that it may have tuberculosis. Now I understand that this is a bacterial infection, and I know most diseases, sicknesses, parasites and bacterial infections are due to poor water quality but everything seems to be fine.
I do, however have 5 minnows in a tropical tank, they were originally supposed to be fed to my oscar (after he stopped eating), but he wasn't interested so they've been in a 30 gallon with my betta since (6 months).
I separated the infected fish from my other ones, it's now in an unheated 5 gallon. I treated the minnow with Melafix, and treated my other fish with a bacterial infection prevention.
My question is what could have been the cause of this, how do I treat it and is there a chance my other fish are susceptible to it?

Here are some pictures I took this morning of my fish...

It may be fish TB, but it could also be a breeding defect or any number of things...

He won't enjoy living on his own too much, I have 7 in my tank.

They will be OK at warmer temps (MAX 26'C) but will not live as long (though my oldest are 5 years+ at 24'C), they also appreciate a decent flow and well oxygenated water (but are hardy so will survive anywhere).

If it was me, and I was as worried as you, I would either euthanise this fish and keep an eye on the rest or setup an unheated aquarium for the group.

Also as a note, feeding live fish to another fish is not only bad for them, but also unethical/possibly illegal (feeding a living vertebrate).

nurglespuss said:

It may be fish TB, but it could also be a breeding defect or any number of things...

He won't enjoy living on his own too much, I have 7 in my tank.

They will be OK at warmer temps (MAX 26'C) but will not live as long (though my oldest are 5 years+ at 24'C), they also appreciate a decent flow and well oxygenated water (but are hardy so will survive anywhere).

If it was me, and I was as worried as you, I would either euthanise this fish and keep an eye on the rest or setup an unheated aquarium for the group.

Also as a note, feeding live fish to another fish is not only bad for them, but also unethical/possibly illegal (feeding a living vertebrate).

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[font="arial][size="2"]Thanks, I got the fish checked out, I was told it was just a genetic deformity.. I'm going to move some fish around and put the minnows in one of my 10 gallons instead.

As for feeding live fish - The only reason I bought them is because my oscar was depressed and refused to eat anything for about 45 days. [/size][/font]
It was a last resort..
For the record though, feeding live fish isn't all that bad for them. Fish such as guppies are filled with protein.
Live fish is one of the most natural sources of food you can give to fish.
What is bad for them is when feeder fish are bred in dirty conditions and transfer diseases, parasitic organisms, bacterial infections and other sicknesses to your fish. That's why it's good to quarantine the fish or shrimp for at least two weeks.
Fish eat other fish in the wild, wild fish have a greater lifespan then the ones in captivity.
I, myself don't feed live fish, I'll feed worms once in a while to my predator fish but I've never fed live fish. Excusing the one time when I tried, unsuccessfully to get my oscar cichlid to eat.
Fish as an occasional monthly treat doesn't hurt at all.

I've no problem feeding Live inverts, but theres never a good reason to feed Live fish. Plus most feeder fish are nutritionally bad for the Target.

Well there was for me.
Nevertheless, he didn't eat them anyway.

hi - i was just reading this post and looking at the pics because i noticed that a couple of my WCMMs were getting skinny and not eating and today i noticed that it's spine is humped like that. i also came home to find what i thought were two perfectly healthy WCMMs dead in my plants. unfortunately i didn't see any of this until after i added some new fish to the aquarium.
OP - if you are still on the board, how did you know it was a genetic defect as opposed to TB? i'm so freaked out now that my fish have TB and the whole tank is infected and i'm going to get sick!! i don't know what to do!!
i've now quarantined the humped fish in a plastic container and left it floating in the tank.
i feel sick to my stomach if this is TB...

i will call the store where i bought it and see if they can help or know what it is...
my fish looks like the OP's pics...and i have one more skinny one but he's not bent yet...

i just started doing this as well! i have a new tank that's only been up for about a month now!

g3mini said:

hi - i was just reading this post and looking at the pics because i noticed that a couple of my WCMMs were getting skinny and not eating and today i noticed that it's spine is humped like that. i also came home to find what i thought were two perfectly healthy WCMMs dead in my plants. unfortunately i didn't see any of this until after i added some new fish to the aquarium.
OP - if you are still on the board, how did you know it was a genetic defect as opposed to TB? i'm so freaked out now that my fish have TB and the whole tank is infected and i'm going to get sick!! i don't know what to do!!
i've now quarantined the humped fish in a plastic container and left it floating in the tank.
i feel sick to my stomach if this is TB...

i will call the store where i bought it and see if they can help or know what it is...
my fish looks like the OP's pics...and i have one more skinny one but he's not bent yet...

i just started doing this as well! i have a new tank that's only been up for about a month now!

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Hi, I noticed this was a few weeks old, but I thought I'd reply. TB is very rare, and it seems to me that genetic deformity is most likely the cause. It actually seems a bit common in my area, and this isn't just from one breeder. I took my fish to an exotic vet (yes, all that for a minnow, but it could've been my whole tank), the guy told me if no other fish showing symptoms than it's most likely a deformity. Not sure if he knew what he was talking about but nevertheless. My minnow died about 3 months after this was posted. Now, I'm starting to notice some of my newer minnows and the ones I've had previously having a curved spine. They're still eating, but I don't think they'll last very long. Once again, none of my other fish are showing any symptoms.
Lately I have been having problems with my minnows, not just the spine deformity, I actually have had a few die on me. No reason what so ever, levels are fine, my cories and otos are even breeding in there.

I wouldn't sweat it too much, TB is pretty rare and you most likely wouldn't get it without poor water quality. Keep your fish quarantined for a few weeks and just check your aquarium every day and watch to see if any fish are showing symptoms. I've had a few deformed fish that will just give up, stop eating, stop moving all together and just wait to die. What you think is symptoms of TB could be the fish just giving up because of the deformity (loss of appetite, inactive).

I believe TB is a type of bacterial infection, if you're still worried you can pick up some medication to treat it (not TB specifically). I use probiotics mainly to treat and a number of natural alternatives as I don't like putting chemicals in my aquariums.
If you can try to set up a small aquarium and just monitor the fish, if you keep it in a container it will only make it stressed and will most likely stop eating.

Don't worry about it, i have a skinny little zebra danio who developed a bent spine (seriously bent, not like yours, literally a 70 degree angle), at the start of his illness he could barley swim and would just role around on the bottom of the tank or breathe constantly at the surface (body perpendicular to the surface). He also developed two red- i'm going to say gauges- on either side of his body. During the time he was ill one two of his perfectly healthy tank mates died over night. I had no idea what to do. My zebra population had fallen from 6 to 3 (one died due to old age before hand) in a matter of maybe 2/3 weeks. I did loads of water changes, i scrubbed the tank with a nail cleaner and didn't care about stirring up the gravel with my bare hands (i didn't know that fish tb could be passed onto humans and to be honest i still put my hands in the tank to clean the algae of the sides). I treated the aquarium with aquarium salts, ammonia removers, melafix and primafix, i borrowede an aeration device of my friend (now returned) and i plpanted some plants to provide the fish with comfort. There were only 3 fish in the 40 litre tank so they didn't produce much waste. Now, guess what, the 3 danios are still going strong. The two alright ones are massive and the one which was ill still has the bent spine and the scars from the red gauges but he's much better and gets his fair share of the tropical flakes and bloodworms (when he was ill, i had to feed him seperatly from the other zebras because they like their food and bashed him around a bit). He also swms a bit wobly and very slowly but he hangs out more with the wcmm now becuase he's bigger than them so they don't bash him like the zebras did. (They didn't bash him because of the tank being too small, there were 3 in a 40 litre tank, they only did it during feeding which i guess is pretty acceptable). One really awesome thing is saw was when my little bent zebra was ill he would often hang around a very young but pretty big leopard danio. The leopard danio would often protect him from the big zebras in the tank and would even wait next to him when he was lying on the floor resting. (I say resting becuase i presume trying to swim with a bent spine is pretty tough workout). Oh also, i havn't contracted any symptoms of fish tb so i think i'm alright. If you do put your hand in the tank, it's ok as long as you don't have any open wounds.




This is the little zebra now. I'm not very good with a camera so you can't really see the tail angel or the red marks on his body but i think you can see that he's pretty skinny although definetly looking better than how he did look.



This is one of the big zebra danios- you can't really get the idea of scale but she's around 2.5 inches i reckon.