Neon Tetra Disease

A

ArkyLady

Addict In Training
Nov 27, 2002
564
1
0
58
Arkansas
I have some neon tetras that I got about 4 months ago. I didn't quarantine them because I setup a new tank (fishless cycled) just for the tetras and some panda cories that I added all at the same time.

Everything was fine for about 5 weeks, until I noticed one looked ill. So I started researching diseases and discovered that he most likely had NTD (his colors were very faded out, though he wasn't swimming funny and didn't have a curved spine yet). There is no real cure for NTD, so I euthanized the fish in hopes I could stop it from spreading to any of the other fish.

The problem is about every 3 weeks or so, I have another tetra with the same symptoms. I just had to put another one down today :(

I read that NTD is a very slow killer, but it just seems weird that it's just one fish at a time with so much time in between them. Has anyone else had any experience with NTD? Is this how it progresses normally? Or do I maybe have something else going on in this tank I should look into?
 
Oh I should add that I have some glowlight tetras that I bought from the same source that are in another tank and I've had zero problems with any of them being sick.
 
My neons got it too. They have died one by one over the last four months or so. I have two left. There are also rummynose, blackphantom and red eye tetras in the tank. As of right now it appears the disease has stopped. Nothing new in about a month. It appears to have no rhyme or reason to me.
 
When i got a school of glowlight tetras over a year ago, after the first month one came down with the classic symptoms of NTD:

-swam off by itself
-lost color
-head higher than tail

I put the fish down, did a huge water change, and the rest of the fish are OK. I have neons in there now with the glowlights, and they are all fine.

The moral? if your fish show the sytmoms of NTD there may still be hope for the others + quarantine your fish to avoid the problem!
 
Isolating and euthanizing the sufferersas you'all are doing is good practice, because the sporozoans are freed when the fishes' muscles soften after death. Maybe a scavenger could be infected from an infected corpse too.

So Pleistophora can die away if you keep removing the sick ones.

Has anyone read anything about how long a spore can remain infective in the substrate? Aquaria with Pleistophora should be kept quarantined-- for how long I wonder?
 
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