TB, and effected fish…

[Magnum Man]

So I’m not really understanding this, as it wasn’t around, when I had tanks 20 years ago ( or at least hadn’t been diagnosed )

Rumored to have come from Asian farming techniques… some fish species seem to be more susceptible to it than others ( my 1st experience, was with yellow axelrodi rainbows… the 3 I had with the rest of the rainbows all succumbed to it, yet none of the others have… Asia breeds a lot of fish, and there are other fish with this disease, but certain fish just seem doomed to die from it… while others in the tank never do…

Then there are the extreme ways of dealing with it from killing all the fish in the exposed tank, and a full sanitize of the tank, and all the components, while some can do nothing, but regular water changes and their fish will live…

There seems to be a big gap in knowledge here, and you would think if it can effect humans, there would be more reliable data out there…

I’m trying to do a rainbow tank again, Even though I swore off them, after losing those last 3…

 

[Colin_T]

Fish Tuberculosis (aka Fish TB) are caused by a really old group of bacteria in the Genus Mycobacteria. They have been around for hundreds of millions of years and some fish have evolved to live with it for a while but other fish have only just recently been exposed to it. Fishes from Europe and Asia have been exposed to different species of Mycobacteria for tens of thousands of years and probably longer (maybe millions of years). Fishes from Australia and New Guinea (PNG) have never been exposed to Mycobacteria until the last 50 years. Because the fishes from Australia and PNG haven't been exposed to this type of bacteria, it kills them pretty quickly. Whereas fishes from Europe and Asia have had thousands of years to live with the bacteria and develop ways to tolerate it for longer.

The reason rainbowfishes are susceptible to Mycobacteria more than other fishes is because they never saw a Mycobacteria cell until rainbowfish got brought into captivity (around 50 years ago). Then the fish got swarmed with new types of disease organisms from Asian fish kept in aquariums and the rainbowfish simple can't evolve fast enough to deal with the diseases.

Catfish and bottom dwelling fishes seem unaffected by Fish TB (at least to a major degree) but rainbowfishes are usually the first fish to present with the problem. Bottom dwelling fishes appear to have a stronger immune system due to living on the bottom of creeks and rivers and being more likely to pick up disease organisms that sink to the bottom. Rainbowfishes are mid to surface dwelling fishes that don't normally eat stuff off the bottom. It's presumed these are a couple of the reasons rainbowfish are more susceptible to Fish TB, in addition to never having been exposed to it until late last century.

The reason some rainbowfish appear to not have issues with it is because they don't have it. A lot of rainbowfish come from home breeders and they might have Fish TB in their tanks. The offspring usually pick it up there and due to the slow growth rate of Mycobacteria, it can take years before it kills the fish. Other fish might be bred by other people who don't have Mycobacteria in their tanks and their fish don't die because they don't have the infection.

Mycobacteria have been known to science for a long time and aquarium books back in the 1960s and 70s mentioned it, so it was known back then and I knew about it in the 70s. Shops knew about it back in the 80s and onwards (at least around where I live) but nobody talked about it unless you found someone who specifically wanted info on it and or was losing fish to an unknown reason. Then further investigations might have lead to the fish being identified as infected with Mycobacteria.

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Mycobacterial infections in humans have been around for as long as people have been. Some species of Mycobacteria cause Tuberculosis in people, animals and birds. Some species cause leprosy in people and animals.

The species of Mycobacteria that infect fish can cause localised infections in people if you get TB contaminated water on open wounds. Then the bacteria develop inside the wound and stop it healing. Over a period of months the infection (called a granuloma) gets bigger and you need antibiotics to treat it. Mycobacteria are slow growing bacteria and it can take months before the infection is identified by a doctor who takes swabs of the wound and sends it off for culturing in a lab.

Fish Mycobacterial infections in people have been known for decades but they were never common and it wasn't until the 1990s when Fish TB infections started to become common in aquariums. Prior to this Fish TB infections might be reported once every 5-10 years and people with infections might show up once in the same period. Around the 1990s (in Western Australia) is when it started to show up a lot more and this coincided with rainbowfish becoming more popular. It's also around this time a lot more places started importing fish from various Asian fish farms and they were all being sent through the same brokers in Asia. This meant most fishes coming out of Indonesia and other tropical Asian fish farms were potentially exposed to Fish TB. In addition to this, Fish TB was found in most tanks in every pet shop in the country so fish were being infected in Asia, at the exporters, importers, wholesalers and pet shops.

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For people who haven't read the following link, it has more info on Fish TB infections in people.

Questions regarding fish TB

So I have been reading things in Manual of Fish Health and this forum and have a bunch of questions regarding fish TB: 1. Why TB are common in fish from south/asian farm? 2. Can fish get TB even if you don’t buy new fish? 3. I always have cuts on my hand (I don’t know how?) How many percent can...

www.fishforums.net

 

[GaryE]

Fish defend themselves by building cysts around the infection. What we see really depends on where the cyst is. If it's along the spine , you get fish with twisted bodies as the bone growth is affected. Some species can contain the bacteria for years, and with others, it just runs wild in them. If a fish has a potential captive lifespan of 10 years, a tb infection encysted will usually let them live 3 or 4.
So quarantine isn't going to stop it.
When they die, the Mycobacteria in them floods out, and that can overwhelm even the strongest tankmates. If the carcass is eaten, the whole tank is in danger. Think pet shops, fishfarms with thousands of fish in a pond. It spreads like human tb does in prisons.
In rainbows especially, I've seen a rectangular plaque - not sore in its early stages, but a hard, discoloured distinctive shape. I caught fish tb (6 months of an antibiotic cocktail) and I knew it when I saw that exact plaque on my hand.

It's a great fish conspiracy disease, as it is really bad for business. Ten years ago, if I mentioned I had had it on a forum, I would be attacked in posts. I'd be told I was scaremongering, and that the disease wasn't real. I wish it weren't. I don't base my view of things on wishes.

So what to do?

Purchase carefully. There is no cure, and no treatment. The bacteria can survive bleach. I assume it is present, always, in small numbers. I try to keep it from becoming big numbers. I never buy pet shop rainbows. I know my two species here are clean. If I think I see it on a new fish, I cull. That is cruel - a death sentence without trial. But it's the only defence. When I read people "rescuing" (ie, buying) Bettas in bad conditions, I wince. There are lots of well cared for, strangely short lived bettas out there. Recently I was told they were immune to fish tb. Uh huh. Nice wish.

Local breeders, wild caught fish and specialty dealers are your best defences. Cheap, mass produced farmed fish are your biggest risk group. You will only catch it if you are extremely unlucky and are immune compromised. I was ill when I got it. If you are a druggie, have an immune system disease, are in chemo or otherwise compromised, wear gloves to put your hands in the water. Never put your hands in with open wounds. Wait a day and let things heal.

It's an ancient life form, and we live in the Age of Bacteria. So we live with it.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I've been seriously considering getting more Pseudomugilinae and focusing on them for some breeding... so is this likely to be something I need to worry about?

It seems as though it may be less of a problem with these dwarf species, since they're more of an "annual", short lived fish that reproduce rapidly?

I'm also concerned about being able to get wild caught or uninfected fish, since Aus is very strict about exports...

And dwarf neon blue rainbows can be more long lived too, and I was also considering them.

 

[Magnum Man]

so are were putting on "blinders" to say buy "wild caught"??? it sounds like a gamble us fish people have to take in the hobby, the risks should be lower from wild caught, rather than coming from poorly farmed fish, but we have polluted the world, even remote areas... I think @GaryE ... described wild catching fish among the garbage, in the wilds of Africa... plus we have to assume these bacteria are in nature as well... but in the grand scheme of water changes, you can't get better than nature, as far as shear volumes of water changes...

I did ( & do we ever really get rid of it ) had Mycobacteria in the tank that I had the rainbows in... so is Mycobacteria on your gravel, a guarantee, you are getting fish TB... are they directly related??? do sick fish introduce it to our aquariums??? how did it get here??? it's certainly in nature... big patches of it can be witnessed in many places...

I've never been a water change fanatic ( like some members here ) but maybe we ( the hobby ) did this to ourselves... when I had tanks long ago, water changes were just done, when doing major tank cleanings... I was an early proponent of growing terrestrial plants out of my tanks, even 20 years ago, and with the advantages those plants provided... I mostly just refilled evaporation ( which is not a water change BTW... )

so what do we really do now... it sounds to me. like the water change fanatics, had it right all along... if we can reduce the bacteria numbers in our micro environments, it may reduce those numbers our fish are exposed to... so our drinking water is bacteria free... right???

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I've been seriously considering getting more Pseudomugilinae and focusing on them for some breeding... so is this likely to be something I need to worry about?

It seems as though it may be less of a problem with these dwarf species, since they're more of an "annual", short lived fish that reproduce rapidly?

I'm also concerned about being able to get wild caught or uninfected fish, since Aus is very strict about exports...

And dwarf neon blue rainbows can be more long lived too, and I was also considering them.

Having to give this really seriously thought now. Especially since I have and want to try breeding P. luminatus, which I discovered are from Indonesia, not Australia like most of the pseudomugil's I was looking at, and thinking of putting in a tank with the luminatus.

And after reading up on them on Fishbase, found out they're fairly recently introduced into the hobby, and as 1019, endangered in the wild. So captive breeding might well preserve them, and it might be better not to get and mix in fish that are more likely to be carrying fish TB?

I wonder whether the ones I've seen in store are wild caught or if these fish are being bred in fish farms, or I should try to source from an importer or something if I'm set on them.

 

[GaryE]

Blue eyes (pseudomugils) are not rainbowfish. If you want to see a rainbowfish freak froth at the mouth, say they are. Some of them get very irate.

They're lumped in there by the hobby, but are a different lineage. I don't know how they are with tb. The Iriatherina werneri, threadfin rainbows we get here are awful - just rotten with it. It's a fish I want again, but I haven't seen a shipment with both sexes in good health for years. But I don't know about Pseudomugils. Logically, they should have problems, but I haven't seen that.

I worked with a wild caught only importer, and never saw Myco. Was it there. Sure, it's natural, but when I would drop by the big warehouse importers of farmed fish, it was evident in a number of tanks. You would see sick fish just by walking up the aisles of 40 gallon, central system tanks. I'd look at the tanks where I helped out, and never saw it.

As for bacteria, this is their world. We're 3% bacteria ourselves, by weight. I figure the meaning of life is we have to stay healthy and provide our bacteria with a good planet to live a long life in. We're their planets, which can make us feel important. Wreck your body and you'll kill billions.

It's a monoculture problem. Myco is a dangerous bacteria to us, and other creatures, if it is present in too large numbers. If the balance is off. Its human version is making a comeback as an antibiotic resistant disease. If you read Victorian fiction, it's full of wasting away beauties dying after marriage. "Lungers" were everywhere in the pre-antibiotic age. I imagine, given the anti-science prejudices out there, it'll be back, like measles. There's a Mycobacter evolved for almost every species.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

It's a monoculture problem. Myco is a dangerous bacteria to us, and other creatures, if it is present in too large numbers. If the balance is off. Its human version is making a comeback as an antibiotic resistant disease. If you read Victorian fiction, it's full of wasting away beauties dying after marriage. "Lungers" were everywhere in the pre-antibiotic age. I imagine, given the anti-science prejudices out there, it'll be back, like measles. There's a Mycobacter evolved for almost every species.

Ah yes, all those tragic tales of beauties with 'consumption'. I also suspect we'll be seeing yet more diseases we thought we'd beaten making a comeback. It's already happening.

 

[Colin_T]

Having to give this really seriously thought now. Especially since I have and want to try breeding P. luminatus, which I discovered are from Indonesia, not Australia like most of the pseudomugil's I was looking at, and thinking of putting in a tank with the luminatus.

Rainbowfishes (including Pseudomugils and Iriatherina) are found in Australia and New Guinea. As far as I'm concerned, New Guinea includes West Papua, which is the western half of PNG that the Australian government gave to the Indonesian government back in the 60s. The Indonesians then sent their army in and committed genocide on the locals and after they had cleared the area of the indigenous population, they sent Indonesian settlers there.

Pseudomugils aren't normally infected with TB but they can get it just like any fish can. In Australia Iriatherina werneri are pretty clean (or used to be) but can also catch it.

Melanotaenia praecox (neon blue rainbow) are one of the worst fish for Fish TB, especially in Europe. If you get any, put them in their own tank and keep them isolated from everything else for at least 3 years. If they live that long and don't die, they are free of TB and you can breed them to your heart's content. You can breed them before that time too but TB can take up to 3 years before it kills the fish. Warm water can speed it up and adult rainbowfish kept in 28C water can die within a year of catching TB. Fish kept at 22C can last 2-3 yrs before they die.

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If you want wild caught fishes, take a holiday to PNG, get a guide to some local waterways, ask the locals for permission to collect in their area and gather some fish, and thank them if they let you. If they don't let you, thank them anyway and leave. Sometimes a bribe can get you fish from the local creeks and rivers.

*NB* There are chocodiles in PNG and they are the same sort that live in Australia and eat people. Talk to the locals and avoid the water if they say crocodiles in there.

If you get wild caught fish, try to get 10-20 pairs of each species and have new clean tanks set up for them before you leave (use tissue cultured plants too). When you get the fish back, put them in their own tanks and use separate equipment (nets, gravel cleaners, etc) on those tanks to keep them free of the stuff that's in your other tanks.

Australia has bans on exporting native fish, animals, birds, reptiles and plants. I did look into exporting native fishes and their eggs many years ago but the paperwork was bad. I could deal with the paperwork but the government wanted proof I had owned the fish for x years and the fish were however many generations of captive bred they wanted before I could export them. And there was no way to prove they were captive bred, let alone how many generations. The government made it virtually impossible to export native fish legally.

Some of the guys in ANGFA used to get rainbowfish eggs and put them in small phials of water with some acrylic yarn. The phials were then sealed and put in visitor's pockets to be taken out of the country. I don't know if this still happens but it's how most of the Australian rainbowfishes made it to America and Europe.

 

[Colin_T]

so are were putting on "blinders" to say buy "wild caught"??? it sounds like a gamble us fish people have to take in the hobby, the risks should be lower from wild caught, rather than coming from poorly farmed fish, but we have polluted the world, even remote areas... I think @GaryE ... described wild catching fish among the garbage, in the wilds of Africa... plus we have to assume these bacteria are in nature as well... but in the grand scheme of water changes, you can't get better than nature, as far as shear volumes of water changes...

Fish TB has to be introduced into some areas for it to become established. Having rubbish and chemicals in the environment doesn't introduce TB but when governments release tilapia into Lake Wanam and other places in countries like New Guinea, then those tilapia can introduce TB to the area.

As a general rule, wild caught fish should be less likely to carry Fish TB but if they are put in a shop tank or a holding facility that has TB in, there's a chance they can get it.

I did ( & do we ever really get rid of it ) had Mycobacteria in the tank that I had the rainbows in... so is Mycobacteria on your gravel, a guarantee, you are getting fish TB... are they directly related??? do sick fish introduce it to our aquariums??? how did it get here??? it's certainly in nature... big patches of it can be witnessed in many places...

The Mycobacteria gets shed from the fish and ends up in filters, on plants, gravel and ornaments in the tank. There's no guarantee other fish will pick it up from the tank, but there's a pretty good chance they will just due to the numbers of Mycobacteria cells that end up in the aquarium.

It gets introduced into aquariums via infected fish and or contaminated plants, ornaments, gravel, etc, or water from an infected tank. Unfortunately you can't tell if a fish has it until the fish shows symptoms. So even if the fish looks good when you buy it, it could have a few Mycobacterium cells growing in it and the fish won't show symptoms for months or even years after you get the fish.

I've never been a water change fanatic ( like some members here ) but maybe we ( the hobby ) did this to ourselves... when I had tanks long ago, water changes were just done, when doing major tank cleanings... I was an early proponent of growing terrestrial plants out of my tanks, even 20 years ago, and with the advantages those plants provided... I mostly just refilled evaporation ( which is not a water change BTW... )

so what do we really do now... it sounds to me. like the water change fanatics, had it right all along... if we can reduce the bacteria numbers in our micro environments, it may reduce those numbers our fish are exposed to... so our drinking water is bacteria free... right???

Clean tanks don't necessarily help prevent Fish TB. I religiously did my tanks once a week and I did big water changes, gravel cleaned the entire substrate and kept things spotless but my fish still got it. The water changes and gravel cleans might have helped a bit but they didn't stop fish dying from it. It's just luck of the draw, either the fish have it or they don't.

Drinking water is not necessarily free from it. Mycobacteria can tolerate low levels of chlorine for a short time (hours or maybe days), and tolerates higher levels of chlorine for less time (a few minutes to hours). Theoretically any bacteria in our drinking water should be killed by the low levels of chlorine or chloramine in the tap water, but there is not a 100% guarantee. However, even if there is a few Mycobacterium cells in the tap water that survive, they are unlikely to survive our stomach acids.

Mycobacterium cells have a waxy coating around them and this protects them from chemicals, drying out, and immune systems. If you can get rid of the waxy coating, you can kill the bacteria quite easily, but the hard part is getting rid of the waxy coating. Chlorine (household bleach or swimming pool chlorine) mixed with water and left in contact with infected items will break down and remove the waxy coating and usually kill the Mycobacterium cells. The items can then be rinsed under tap water and sprayed with 60%+ alcohol to make sure the TB cells are dead. Vinegar could also work after bleaching.

Heat also kills Mycobacteria and 60C for a couple of minutes will cook it and kill it. Sunlight does not kill Mycobacteria unless you live in a desert or have really hot days (40C+ in the shade) and the Mycobacteria is in the sun where it heats up to 50C for an hour or more.

 

[GaryE]

This is of no practical use, but I wore a winter glove in the house, and put an air activated little heater like we would use in a fish box inside it. I was told that would risk scarring, but since I'd caught the infection early, it had been pushed back to my hand by then (after 4 months of antibiotics at that point). The heat risked causing serious "spidering" scars, but I dodged that and it accelerated the death of the bacteria. It really dislikes heat, but even with that, it probably survived a few hours daily for 6 weeks or so.

They are tough little ^%^%$% #$@# *(&^*^%^ !!!!!!!!

At the heat fish tolerate, it actually spreads better. In cooler tanks, it's less dangerous.

We like to control the environment in our tanks, but there are a few things like Myco that defy control. Unfortunately, they do shorten fish lives. It isn't always by a lot, as it is with rainbows. And some fish have great defences. My Aphyosemion killifish, from an ancient lineage, have never shown signs of it. They also don't seem to get Ich. But other Genera of killies get both. Killies are related to Poecilia livebearers, and guppies are slaughtered by tb. I don't like it, and I try to be cautious. But it is just something we have to observe.

When I was a kid, it was called wasting disease in the fish world. People thought it was cancer. I think it only became a common thing as the hobby shifted away from small farming to the corporate, shareholder ridden mega farms in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia etc. As the farms became larger and larger, outbreaks couldn't be contained. Pandemics love cities and love travellers, so the fish industry is now beautifully set up to spread diseases, inadvertently.

 

[Magnum Man]

Well, in the tank with the clown loaches and Rainbow fish had another case of sudden death syndrome on another Rainbow… the tank was looking pretty great. I’m thinking of not buying Rainbows any more, and letting those live, with expectations of them dying sooner or later… so trying to figure out a better replacement… I’ve never had paradise fish, because of their origins, would they be more resistant… I suppose I could dial the heater down some and move my adult Tin Foils to that tank… taking some of the pressure off the Hillstream tank??? Thoughts??? I wouldn’t want to commit the Tin Foils to a shorter life by moving them… but my understanding, some fish are either more resistant, or more tolerant of it

 

[GaryE]

It becomes a wait and see tank. Moving fish out of it or into it is a dangerous idea - you might be moving the tb with them. In fact, you will be. A fish that can resist will still have it, and when it's put with a fish that can't fight it off, you have a spread.
If a fish contracts tb, its lifespan is generally reduced by half to 2/3. That's a resistant fish. A fish that has no defences has only weeks or months to live.
It's a nasty disease that has driven more than one person out of the hobby. I have largely given up on rainbows because of it, and I really enjoyed those fish.

I would expect a clown loach, which I seem to recall can live for a few decades, might make 5 years if it has tb.

I have had hundreds of paradise fish. I had them in a pond, and they bred like stupidity. Then in a tank, they were almost as productive. They like slow moving water, and like to have a bit of a winter, where things cool down. It's a fish that likes seasons.

Personally, I would put that tank in permanent quarantine. Once the fish are all gone, you could look at what you can do, but I would not add or move the fish in it. I had a 55 that ended up like that for 3 years. When the fish had all died, I emptied it and cleaned it, and put it aside as I was moving. Then when my friends came to help me load the truck, the guys carrying it dropped it. Problem solved, sort of.

 

[Magnum Man]

Just for clarification, the only fish that come out of the tank get relocated to my septic system ( not alive of coarse )

 

[GaryE]

@Magnum Man But until they are all gone, I would add nothing into that tank.