Bent backs

I received an assortment of platies, guppies, and tetras a couple weeks ago. Two of the platies were very sick looking and they started developing a bent spine, I quickly quarantined them but they didn't last long. Ever since then one by one the other platies and guppies have developed bent spines and have died. Several of the tetras have died as well but they didn't have bent backs. My water has been perfect so I'm not sure what's going on. I only have 2 guppies and a few tetras left and they don't look like they will last long. I googled bent spines and came back with fish TB, now I'm totally freaked out and I hope that it is something else.

Edit:
Fish are in a brand new tank that was cycled using the fishless method and the water parameters are normal. there is brand new gravel, a brand new filter, brand new logs that I boiled for hours, and brand new plants that were dipped in a bleach solution and then rinsed really well. The only fish in that tank are the ones that were given to me. I have been checking the water weekly and have boosted the temp and added some salt to try and help things.

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One of the last guppies.

Ugh, I always associated this with muti generational inbreeding. Don't know much about TB though am sure someone else will jump in with more knowledge on diseases.

Here is one article on Fish Tuberculosis...yes, very scary. Part of the scary comes from the fact that you can be exposed to this disease also.

None of the articles I read discuss how long it takes for this disease to affect healthy fish. Assuming your fish were healthy when the newcomers came in and assuming the newcomers were diseased it sounds like the disease has traveled pretty fast through the tank. And from your descriptions ...water parameters good but the bent spine developing and the picture above with the bent spine and "wasted" appearance...it points to something serious going on. Possibly you can find someone who could "autopsy" or culture one of your fish to assist you with diagnosis of this as it is serious.

Anyway...given all of that...I would be very cautious when doing anything in the tank. I would break it down, throw away everything in it that is disposable and can not be bleached thoroughly. Err on the side of safety with this situation.

Sorry for your loses...

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oh...and I just thought of one other thing you need to be cognizant of...if you have shared any equipment across tanks...i.e. used a net in this tank then another tank while it was still wet. Some pathogens (and really many fish ones) travel via "wet". It is important when managing multiple tanks to make sure you have "separate" nets and siphons for all your tanks. Nothing wet should ever cross over from tank to tank unless it has been disinfected. Just one more precaution.

Quarantining incoming new fish will also help alleviate entire tank loss when something like this happens. I know I have been lax on occasion in quarantining but situations like your above truly are the reason we should all do it. I would rather lose a few "new" fish than my whole tank of established fish.

Hang in there Morgan.

What about the fish that are not showing symptoms? Also what do I do with the live plants? Is there any way to disinfect them?

I'm sorry I think I misunderstood your situation.  From your original post I was thinking that the entire tank was infected already ... both old and new fish.  So is it only the new fish that are affected right now?

Well...one option, if you have other fish in that tank, would be to treat the entire tank like a quarantine tank, pulling fish as they sicken and die and treating the remaining fish with whatever treatment you think might help.  I would be very careful to label EVERYTHING that is used in that tank and to make sure it doesn't come in contact with your other tanks, keeping it (like the nets, siphons, etc) exclusive to that tank.

The only other option I see than the above is to treat the entire tank as a loss even though you have some fish that are not showing symptoms as it is possible that if just the newcomers sickened and died so far that they have now infected your other fish and it is only a matter of time before your other fish sicken also.  How much time it would take is the question.  When would you feel comfortable that those fish are not sick and will not pass on some issue to other fish?  Personally I would have a hard time making those decisions and would probably destroy all stock for fear of passing along something very serious to other fish and or keepers if I shared fish unless I could get some type of biopsy that would tell me exactly what the problem is.

Neither option is a great one...sorry.  Maybe others have some others ideas.

As for the plants...that is your call.  I have no experience with fish TB but I would think that plants would have to be destroyed but that is just my guess.  Readings indicate that it is a very hard disease to eradicate and that everything must be sterilized if you intend to reuse it but given the fact you are trying to salvage some fish that exist in the tank your process may be different.  Something you need to give a lot of thought to.

This sucks.. Do you think a bleach dip would disinfect the plants? I don't really want to loose my last bit of Limnophila. I sounds like the safest course is to euthanize the remaining fish and bleach the heck out of the tank. Ugh..

Man this sucks so bad.. I have some of these fish in my tank

Look guys. Those fish came out of my tanks fat and healthy.  If my tanks had TB all fishes will be dead by now. I crosscontaminent by putting current plants and current fishes in different tanks (aquascape different tanks all the time). None are dead. Denizaari's african cichlids would be dead. How about check your parameters by the masters kit. Those strip test kits are inaccurate. Btw I've cut my hands (new homemade glass top did that) and my hands in the water. No TB bacteria present. Looking at my tanks no sickness or bent backs. How about you Denizaari, your Africans have sickness? Its been couple months right?

I have had Wes's old stock for about 2-3 months now and all my fish are doing well. I've introduced new fish into them over that period of time and so far no issues. My water parameters are within acceptable range (I wish I could raise my pH higher) and all the fish are eating with the exception of the females that are holding.

MissGrumpyGills are your fishes showing any symptoms or none at all?

This happened to my big group of glofish after I had them for several months, none of the other fish in my tank were affected..

The black skirts are doing good, but the whitish platy did not look healthy when we got her and she died. We did acclimate them properly and our water is good. Im really sorry if it feels like we are blaming you, but we just cannot think of anything else. Adding these fish was the only thing that changed, so idk  

Does your tank have many generations of fish Sirwes?

SiRWesDragon wrote:Look guys. Those fish came out of my tanks fat and healthy.  If my tanks had TB all fishes will be dead by now. I crosscontaminent by putting current plants and current fishes in different tanks (aquascape different tanks all the time). None are dead. Denizaari's african cichlids would be dead. How about check your parameters by the masters kit. Those strip test kits are inaccurate. Btw I've cut my hands (new homemade glass top did that) and my hands in the water. No TB bacteria present. Looking at my tanks no sickness or bent backs. How about you Denizaari, your Africans have sickness? Its been couple months right?

Seriously You didn't have to say anything I purposely didn't say your name for this reason, Im just trying to figure out what to do. The tank was brand new only your fish were in there so it didn't come from me. I test my water with a master kit why would you think I was using the strips? and the fish you gave me were not fat and happy the platies had sunken bellies and the guppies had torn tails. Back off I'm just trying to get some advice.

Guys this is dropsy not bent spines

Before this escalates into something more, I'm going to step in and say that this topic is starting to get a little out of hand. Let's keep side comments to a minimum, and/or resolve any issues at hand via PM. Thank you

Do it. Or else, I will Derp all over this place! :p
-Deputy Derp

fishyladdy wrote:Guys this is dropsy not bent spines

There is no "scaling" affect, so I don't think so. No swelling, The fish's stomach is actually sunken. No popeye. Just a grossly bent spine and tattered fins.

fishyladdy wrote:Guys this is dropsy not bent spines

They don't have the pine cone look they still eat fine so no its not dropsy, I know what dropsy looks like this is not it.

fishyladdy wrote:Guys this is dropsy not bent spines

Fishyladdy...the fish are not described as pineconing or swollen up which are the most common symptoms of dropsy.

And really it is hard to diagnosis what has happened with the fish Morgan has. Often times illness in fish is a cummulative thing...this and that and then stress. It adds up and you end up with sick fish. BUT there are some concerns here and Morgan is simply trying to make some intelligent decisions regarding those concerns. I don't think there has been any pointing fingers here guys...just someone trying to figure out how to proceed given the fact they are losing fish with those symptoms and what they are concerned about.

Deep breaths...we all have times when fish get sick. It happens but when entire tanks are affected it can be scary. Just normal to feel concerned.

Symptoms of Dropsy:

•Grossly swollen belly (No they look sunken)

•Scales stand out (pinecone appearance) (Nope they look normal)

•Eyes bulge (Nope)

•Gills become pale (Nope)

•Anus becomes red and swollen (Nope)

•Feces pale and stringy (Nope)

•Ulcers form on the body along the lateral line (Nope)

•Spine may become curved (Yes)

•Fish clamps fins (Nope)

•Fish becomes lethargic (Yes)

•Fish stops eating (Nope)

•Fish hangs near the surface (Nope)

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first stage
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second stage
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third stage..
looks like dropsy to me. i have had guppies get it and not get fat at all.

Yes deep breaths  lol I think we all can understand that even thinking about having to trash a tank and all plants and inhabitants would be frustrating. Combined with the fact that if it's TB it could be transferred to humans. I hope this is not the case.

Dropsy images straight from google...

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thats were i got these imagese too chichlid-gal
i guess im wrong lol and so is google

It wasn't just guppies that were infected it was platies too and none of them got bloated looking.

Sorry I know you didn't name me but I feel bad that now 2 tanks need to bleached out but Im sure its not TB. Cause it would've killed all my tanks. And some other plant it forward ppl. I dont want that. But is all equipment new or recycled from another old tank?

FWIW, I was looking for more info on this, and ran into this article about tuberculosis. Apparently dropsy can be a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of tuberculosis among other diseases, and not a disease itself.

Article:
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Exhaustion of Poeciliidae
Affected fish show loss of appetite, constantly lose weight, and hide in the corners of the aquarium. They will have a curved spine, hollow belly, and sunken eyes. Bones protrude through the skin and scales. Fish will die within a month. An autopsy will not reveal any abnormalities in the internal organs. Sometimes there will be small yellowish granules (round grains) on the liver and kidneys.

An interesting thing about TB is that living things (fish, other animals and us) can be carriers for the disease, and the body, when healthy, will setup contingencies. So a fish in a particular tank may not show any symptoms but be a carrier. Later, if water quality, stress and other diseases enter the mix, the disease can come to show. In this case we don't know what cause the disease to come out. I don't have much to offer regarding solutions beyond culling or treating the tank heavily as described earlier in he the thread or the article above.

I'm really sorry for your losses morgan, this would be a nightmare scenario for me to loose all the fish in a tank to a disease this tough.

Im also sorry for your loss, MorganEA and MissGrumpyGills. I know all my fishes and plants come from all lfs and other fishboxers. All healthy before leaving my house. Hope you find out what it is and reestablish the tanks.

What's the pH, and the hardness in the aquarium. Also what chemical is in the water to cause the foaming in the picture?

Those bubbles... should have seen that sooner! Good catch!
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I was treating the tank with Melafix and it made bubbles.

Cory's on the right track, I think.

Any idea on the difference in GH and KH between the two tanks? Morgan's water is pretty hard compared to most of ours - 9 dGH, but a pretty normal 5 dKH. It's possible the fish were stressed due to a water parameter mismatch. It doesn't matter how carefully you acclimate new fish sometimes, if the difference is great enough.

SirWesDragon - do you know how hard your water is? What is the PH of the tank they came out of? CO2 or not?

Our water should be the same. I live in maple valley. They live in covington. Ph is 6.0 and its co2.

"Should" is easy to say, but not terribly useful.  It would be interesting to see what your KH and GH measure.  With a PH of 6, though, the carbonic acid created by the CO2 injection was likely gobbling up most of the KH in your water.

Those poor fish went from a PH of 6.0 - arguably way too low for livebearers who prefer a PH toward 8 and 10 dGH / 10 dKH in nature - with a fairly high concentration of CO2 to a tank with a PH of likely above 7.5 (given my KH measurement; I didn't measure her PH) and a very low CO2 concentration in comparison.  

It sounds to me like this was acclimation shock - the water params were just too different.

No wonder I couldn't get them to give birth to frys. Im not livebearer keeper.
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I've had a terrible time in the past acclimating store-bought livebearers to my water (5 dKH, 4 DGH at the time). I've been much more successful with them after modifying my water params (8 dKH, 7 dGH now), even though my PH was typically around 7.8. Granted, this could be partially attributed to how they're raised in the fish farms overseas (brackish), but even platies I'm pretty sure were raised apart from salt failed to thrive for me.

Morgan - I've had guppies develop bent backs and not affect any other fish around them multiple times in the past. Chances are you've already cross-contaminated your tanks anyway, so I'd just keep an eye on them and see how your existing population does over the next couple of weeks. I'm betting only the n00bs are affected.

You really think its shock? I drip acclimated them for over an hour. since these were new fish I was really careful about cleaning the nets and buckets with hot water so hopefully there was no cross contamination.

Yes, I do. In my experience, even if you're super careful and do your very best to gradually acclimate a fish (I always drip-acclimate as well), sometimes it's just not enough.

I don't believe SirWesDragon has a horrible disease in his tanks, especially since he says there are no problems like yours on his end. Yes, as others have mentioned, stress does make fish more susceptible to various pathogens (bacteria like fish TB, parasites like ich), but that covers a very wide range of stuff. I could be wrong, but given the big difference in PH and likely other water parameters as well (KH almost certainly, GH possibly) and my experience in the past with livebearers dying off after surviving 1 - 3 weeks in my tanks, acclimation shock seems the most likely explanation to me.

You could always test the theory with a healthy "canary fish" from another tank.

SiRWesDragon wrote:No wonder I couldn't get them to give birth to frys.

And we have a constant stream of fry lol

Here's an article on osmotic shock in fish

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Not trying to scare ppl but do get cuts for my homemade glass top(still sharp) cut my hands and arms then play around in the tanks. Have not got TB bumps like those pictures in Google but now I'm going to wear them cause im paranoid. Though I know I dont have tb in my tanks.

I think the stress (osmotic shock or otherwise) made them susceptible to an otherwise benign pathogen wiped them out.  

I euthanized a brilliant rasbora a couple of weeks ago with a bent back and a messed up eye that was in my 29g community - no other fish were affected.  

I also stick my hands in my tanks regularly (sometimes with cuts, though I do try to minimize that or seal them with superglue first ) and have never run into any issues.

I wouldn't stress too much over it all, but I would keep livebearers in a tank without CO2 in the future.  

As for Morgan's lost fish, well, I can spot her some more platies in the future, if she is so inclined. To my knowledge, the platies I traded to her a few weeks ago are doing well. Us livebearer folks have to stick together, you know.   

The panda platies are very happy   we are enjoying them  

SiRWesDragon wrote:Not trying to scare ppl but do get cuts for my homemade glass top(still sharp) cut my hands and arms then play around in the tanks. Have not got TB bumps like those pictures in Google but now I'm going to wear them cause im paranoid. Though I know I dont have tb in my tanks.

Ouch! you should probably cover those edges!

Trying to sand it more this weekend with mechanic gloves.

SiRWesDragon wrote:Not trying to scare ppl but do get cuts for my homemade glass top(still sharp) cut my hands and arms then play around in the tanks. Have not got TB bumps like those pictures in Google but now I'm going to wear them cause im paranoid. Though I know I dont have tb in my tanks.

If I have any cuts or scratches, I wear gloves.  Some of my fish bite and although they are small with tiny teeth, they can still break the skin.  I'm paranoid too!   
I bought these at a fishing supply place in Seattle.

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The last guppy with the bent back has died so I put some new fish in to see if, what ever this crazy sickness is, spreads to them.

How much, betty?