Goldfish with tuberculosis?

Question

Hi, I need some help with my fishtank. It is a 55 galon with mainly differant kinds of coldwater fish. My one goldfish became sick after being stressed by poor conditions. I fixed my water and removed an agressive fish but my goldfish kept getting worse until it finally died. After researching its symptoms on different fish care websites and books, I am almost certain that it had fish tuberculoses and probably had it when I bought it.

It has spread to atleast one other goldfish in the tank. It is still alive but just lays around. The water quality and temperature are fine for goldfish but I don't have much experience with diseases. I would really apreciate anyones knowlege on if there is anything I can do to prevent the other fish in the tank from also getting sick, if there is anything I can do to help my sick fish, and if any other fish could be infected but are not showing it

Please help!

thank you for the answers,
To describe its symptoms, I would say that it was a little sickly when a bought it, it was an 8 inch white goldfish and you could see some red streaks in its fins. It wasn't very active, but it recovered when I brought it home. I noticed that once in a while when I skip a water change it would slow down and stay in one spot while the other fish were fine. Also, over the past few months it has been loosing weight though I feed it plenty of pond pelets and dried live food. After its tail was nipped it got fin rot and shredded about 2 inches. I gave him tetracycline and nothing happened. I also noticed he had a small red sore under the scales on his back, was very thin, almost misshapen, shrivled down his spine, and had an odd indentation by his anal fin. In the last few days his scales seemed to stick out slightly and he curled sideways and laid around in shelterd places on the bottom of the tank, I hope this helps

Answer 1

You question is much like one I answered earlier.

Fish Tuberculosis is cause by bacteria such as Mycobacterium or Nocardia.

The fish suffering from this disease will have a flatten belly, loss of appetite and color which is close to what you have described.

Fishes infected with fish TB should be separated from the main tank and treated with (recommended medication from a book on such disease) sulphafurazole, doxycycline and minocycline. If the fish is expensive you could even try a vet that handle fishes. Personally I will treat it with standard anti-bacteria, and if it fails I will humanely put it out of it's misery.

I would also suggest that you do a couple of major water change for the main tank after you've removed the sick fish. The bacteria as you suspect, might be in the tank. But if the rest of the fish are healthy, they will have the resistance to fight the bacteria themselves, so they will be fine. Your aim now is to make sure that they stay healthy.

Mycobaterium that cause fish TB is capable of infecting humans. The symptom is persistent skin rash on the finger or hands. The bacteria can infect a person through contact via broken skin. Therefore care should be taken when handling fishes or tank equipment containing the fishes suspected of contracting fish TB.

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Answer 2

It would help us if you could describe what symptoms your goldfish where showing to make you think that fish TB was the problem. Not saying that this isn't what your fish had, but some of the symptoms can be similar to those of other conditions. Please add the symptoms to this question using the pencil icon beneath your question to "add details".

To lessen chance of infection, you should remove any fish which are showing similar symptoms to a different tank/container and perform a series of large water changes (50% ASAP, followed by more changes over the next few days). If any other fish begin to show symptoms, remove these as well (can be put with the ones previously removed).

If this can be diagnosed to a cause, we can give you additional information for possible treatment.


ADDITION: Thanks for the added info. I think I can say the problem you're having doesn't sound so much like fish TB as it does ammonia poisoning.

The symptoms for ammonia poisoning are lethargy, loss of appetite, red streaking on the body and fins, splitting of pins, and reddish coloration to the gills. Initially, the fish may swim at the top of the tank and look like they're gasping for air. Some might mistake this for begging for food (which goldfish are very good at!), but they only beg when someone's near the tank, but the gasping is all the time.

This would seem to be indicated as well by the inconsistent water changes. If the tank is new (less than 2 months old), has had antibiotics used recently, or you have a lot of fish (or added several), this would be another indication. All the fish produce ammonia as a part of their wastes, and this is toxic to them in fairly low concentrations. More fish, or too much food = more ammonia being produced. In a mature tank, there will be bacteria that use the ammonia as an energy source, converting it to nitrite (which is also toxic in small amounts), then another bacteria converts this to nitrate, which the fish can handle in amounts roughly 80 times as high as the previous two compounds. If you use antibiotics, you may kill the bacteria, or you may reduce their numbers if you try to clean the tank too well. This is often the case because when the bacterial population is low, they multiply quickly as long as there's ammonia or nitrite that's not being converted. This rapid reproduction, or "bloom" makes the water appear cloudy, so unfamiliar tank owners may take everything out trying to "clean" their tank because the water looks dirty/cloudy. But this will go away on its own once there are enough bacteria to convert all the ammonia and nitrite and the reproduction slows down.

Rather than trying to clean too much, what you want to do are smaller partial water changes. This will prevent the ammonia and nitrite levels from getting too high, but leave enough that the bacteria reproduce to build up the number they need as fast as possible. Usually around 25% once a week is enough (or about half that twice a week until the bacteria is built up). If you have another tank, or know someone who does, als long as there aren't any problems with disease or algae, you can add the old filter media to your tank - this will contain some of the bacteria as well, and will help your population become established faster.

Just be sure you aren't overfeeding your fish as well - only give them what they can eat in 2-3 minutes twice a day, and remove any food they don't eat in the three minute after that feeding. It also helps to use a siphon to clean any feces/excess food from the gravel when you clean. You won't be able to clean the entire bottom every cleaning without removing more than 25% of the water, but get whatever is lying on the surface and right at the front, then go down into the gravel in about 1/4 of the rest of the tank, just change which section you do each cleaning.

Some links for you:

Answer 3

i had gold fish and i know they are very good fish because they never get sick but sometimes they do so when i read your story i was thinking maybe your goldfish had ammonia to because the symptoms are almost they same i think so i would research more and find more info on diseases for your fish so next time you are more prepared only if you want but also you may not being treating it right like not feeding it enough or something you know but probably not hope that helps i am not really a profeesional

Answer 4

That's uncertain there are actually several possible answers to this question