Fish Tuberculosis???

Hi there.

I am in a bit of a frazzled state right now in the fear that two of my angels may have fish TB.

I had been doing some research to try to determine the cause of a strange swelling of the connective tissue at the base of one of the pectoral fins, and some tail deterioration that occured post quarantine, that had occured on one of the fish in question, when some interesting information on fish TB caught my attention. It stated that on angelfish, one of the first indicators that the fish may be dealing with TB is the presence of dark discolorations or nodules on the fishes cornea. Upon reading this I immediately checked the fish, only to find such nodules.

After doing so I also realized that one of my males, Meathead, (who currently resides with his partner in a separate tank and not in the same tank as the other fish), also has such a nodule on one of his eyes. Upon examining it today, I noticed that it had gone from a raised dark spot to a protrusion. His behavior and appearance is otherwise fine, in fact he is currently parent raising some 1 week old fry with his partner Gloria. So you can certainly understand my concern if this is, in fact, TB. I also noticed that he has some granular growths at the base of his pectoral fin which is visible in the photos as well. Could these be muscular tubercules?

I am honestly puzzled as to where this would have even come from, if that is what this is. These fish haven't lived in the same environment for about 4 months. Both tanks have been in operation for years and I've never seen anything like this before.

The gold marble that is affected lives in a group tank of pre-breeders and is only about 8 months old. The tank is a 44g with 6 angels in it, now 5 who are all fine. A bit on the crowded side but 30% bi-weekly water changes are performed faithfully and all of the parameters (NH3-0, NO2-0, NO3-15-20, pH 8.0-high but stable, Temp. 82°) are steady and normal. I isolated her to a hospital tank as soon as I noticed the pectoral swelling over a week ago. While being treated with salt and melafix, her tail began to deteriorate and the spots on her eyes got worse.

This is a photo of her in the hospital tank when the tail deterioration began.



Here she is today.




Meathead lives with Gloria in a 20 gallon, currently with 40+ one week freeswimming fry. NH3-0, NO2-0, NO3-10, pH-8.0, Temp.82°.

This is how he looked when I got him at quarter size, notice how clear and vibrant the eye is.



This is June 9th.



This is today.






I'm sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be as specific as possible. Has anyone had any experience with angels and fish TB (Mycobacterium Marinum)? What else could be going on here? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Leah

If it's anything like human TB, the stuff is extremely contagious, so it may have gotten by your diligent care. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to be affecting both pectorals, so it may not be systemic. Since the fish are a little crowded, could it be that some fights have broken out? They look and act otherwise healthy; that offers at least a chance that there is no disease. The fighting or fin nipping could be going on in the dark. I really hope the easy explanation is the correct one. Maybe someone knowledgeable about fish diseases will chime in on this. In the interim, it's probably a good idea to keep the affected population isolated. Please let us know how they're doing.

Thanks John.

I forgot to mention that we had a boil water order in our town for the last month due to increased turbidity from heavy rain and mountain run-off.

I have a feeling that there was either something in the water or the change in water chemistry alone caused some stress to them.

Perhaps, if this is TB, they were carrying it all along and it took this stress of water chemistry abnormalities to have it come out.

Aggression is definitely not the cause of the tail deterioration, as I said, it didn't start until days after the gold marble had already been isolated. Also, around the same time that her tail rays just began breaking off in qt, her other pectoral muscle began to swell. I don't think any aggression has the ability to not show signs of damage for a week and then spontaneously develop. It would be nice if it were that simple. The lumps on her eye are also getting worse. Also, even though there is slight crowding, the fish are all under a year in age and were to be moved out as they paired. Water changes twice weekly keep nitrates and dissolved organics low, so water quality is normally not an issue. Unfortunately, what comes in through the tap is out of my control.

Plus, Meathead is in a separate tank from the other fish, with Gloria, and is showing the same eye nodules and pectoral abnormality. In fact, looking at some of my past pictures, it seems the eye nodule was developing in him first, months ago. Overcrowding is not an issue there, the only common denominator is the tap water, my python, and the LFS where they were both purchased.

I've read conflicting evidence of how contagious the TB is. I know it is quite opportunistic, especially towards us humus beans, but have read that healthy fish can typically avoid infection if their immune system is strong. Other's have stated that transmission to healthy fish can occur if a fish with TB dies and is ingested by those healthy fish.

I guess I just have to wait and hope someone out there has something else to add.

Thanks again.

I wonder if the tap water change made the pH fluctuate. Any sudden changes can, of course, affect a fish's immune system. There may even have been something in the tap water that aquarium water test kits do not show. Lately I've even been reading about residue from humus bean medications showing up in tap water. I hope the angelfish get stronger and manage to fight off what ever it is.

And now, here's a dumb question. How did you manage to get such good pictures, and how many megapixels does your camera have? My camera has six MP, and I have to severely crop a picture to get below the KP limit for posting. If I knew as much about raising angelfish as i do about computer operation, most of my aquariums would be empty except for snails ans duckweed.

My camera is a Canon Powershot Digital Elph SD900. It has 10 megapixels.

Personally I can't be bothered to crop photos and such so I just upload everything I want to post to www.photobucket.com and copy and paste the IMG code of each picture I am posting right into the body of my message. Photobucket lets you choose what size you want to upload the pictures as, I find the 640x480 (Large) is the best for forums. It couldn't be easier than that, and you won't get that annoying too large message like when you try to upload original pictures from your files.

As for the quality of my pictures, believe me, I take a lot of crappy ones to get one good one. I have my camera set on the manual mode with the digital macro setting, no flash, and the high ISO speed.

If you don't have a digital macro setting, be sure to set your camera to it's regular macro setting, usually indicated by a flower symbol. (The normal setting is symbolized by mountains usually.) Most cameras have this option, you just may need to hunt for where it is. If you can adjust your ISO speed, (how fast the shutter opens) the higher the number the faster the shutter. That helps catch the fish even if they are moving slightly, and really, when aren't they?

As for the tap water change, I didn't test the parameters out of the tap, so I don't know what differences there were. But being that it wasn't safe to consume indicates to me there could have been any number of nasty cooties in there. I'm hoping that is what's causing this.

I'm going to treat with Kanamycin in the hopes that it is just a less devastating bacterial infection (than TB would be) from the water degradation. I hope it works.

Here's a little more about fish TB. It was posted on another forum, and the author said it would be OK for me to post it here.


Fish Tuberculosis is transferable to humans. It will enter via cuts, scratches or abrasions. So please take precautions until you know for sure. I thought I would also include some of the symptoms and info from a site I found.

Curved or Crooked Spine Skeletal deformity.
Lesions on the body.
loss of scales.
Loss of appetite.
Body wasting Progressive thinness.
Dis-coloration.
Sluggish movement
Folded fins
Eye protrusion
Dark coloration and granular appearance of the cornea.
Hanging at the surface
Skin defects, including blood spots and open wounds that may ulcerate
Black spots, or overall dark coloration (in Cichlids particularly).


Fish Tuberculosis (Curved Spine) Treatments --
Effectively, there is no sensible cure. The only way to cure the infected aquarium is to immediately remove infected fish as soon as they show any symptoms. Ideally all other susceptible fish should also be removed.
Once the fish became emaciated I had no luck saving them. Traditional tricks for curing diseased fish, such as adding salt and raising the temperature, are ineffective and in the case of the raising temperature may even be detrimental. The bacteria grow better in warmer water; their optimum temperature is 30°C. They have no problem with salt either; they can infect saltwater fish as well as freshwater.

I have read cases where treatment of the open wounds with penicillin ointment have effected a cure. As the disease is bacterial, antibiotics should work, but in general these are only available on veterinary prescription and injection of infected fish may be required, so such cures are hardly useful,to the average aquarium keeper.

Fish Tuberculosis (Curved Spine) Prevention --
Prevention is key to avoiding this disease since it is so difficult to cure. The immune system is usually enough to prevent an infection in healthy fish. Stress, which suppresses the body's immune system, and/or wounds in fish are most likely to allow an infection to take hold. Therefore, eliminating stress is paramount. Although aquarists don't frequently get this disease, using gloves when cleaning infected tanks is highly recommended. Starting a siphon by mouth is also a good way to expose yourself unnecessarily to the bacteria. If a tank has been infected, it is considered best to bleach it well and dry it out before restocking it.

Bacilli may be in the faeces, scraps of skin or burst abscesses and can be ingested by healthy fish. If infected fish die and are eaten by others (as we have all seen, on occasion, in a poorly attended fish retailer's stock tanks) then an overwhelming infection may result.


Leah, I hope that it is something simple, that just appears to be TB. As bloody lesions seem to be a definate sign. Also, when my Angels were dying, I spoke to a vet at the time. And I then suggested to her that maybe they had TB. Her first question was "do your fish have lesions on them?" They didn't, so I said no. And she said "if there are no lesions then it's not TB."