New Hillstream Disease -- crazy ideas welcome.

[mikev]

OK, I can now say a few things with a high degree of confidence.

I don't have sufficient data to back up the claims, but I believe that most of the info below is correct.

The disease is (perhaps, was) bacterial in nature, certainly Gram-pos, possibly related to colamnari, but more likely not. It is not related to "patchy", which is gram-neg, both diseases were present in the shipment.

I'm inclined to classify what happened with rasbora as an incident related to the powerhead, rather than the disease; this makes the disease highly specific to suckers, but of course exceptions are possible (people die from bird flu once in a while).

For affected species the disease seems to be 100% fatal; the infection is *very* slow and may take a month to develop enough to start killing. Less than 21-day quarantine is certainly useless, and while *I think* that 1-month no-death quarantine will do, I cannot bet on it.

Maracyns are useless.

The following species are certainly affected.
Gastros
Chenis
Beaufortias
-- the latter have *some* resistance but it does not change the outcome.

The following species seems not be affected.
Lizard-type loaches (my SpA and SpB; SpA is Vantanmenia and *probably* is closely related to disparis, SpB is unclear what).
Erromyzon
Schisturas
-- I'm confident on SpA/SpB, the latter two are based on some data, but not a lot. Errormyzon being unaffected may allow to draw a very neat line.

Physical Symptoms: NONE.
Behavioral Symptoms: Weakness and loss of interest in food is the only reliable sign, and even this may not be noticeable in smaller loaches, like chenis. Quite noticeable in larger ones. Here is why, I think: from the onset of weakness signs, the lifespan of a cheni is measured in hours, but beaufortia may still have a few days. Another way to describe the signs is if the suckers prefer being on the ground to the glass, rocks or leaves.

The exact quarantine and treatment protocols are still being worked out, and I will provide exact recommendations for the cocktail when this is tested several more times for both safety and efficiency. It is being tested right now on the new shipment of hillstreams at a store here.

One part I'm certain of is that Maracyn should not be ever used, it is dangerous and inefficient. I'm still forming my attitude toward Maracyn2.

Sit on my end:
No deaths for more than 10 days now and the behavior of the remaining suckers seems to be back to normal. At the time the treatment started, all suckers exhibited weakness signs. The treatment is not instant, the last loss occurred a few hours after I started it.
(The losses before the treatment started were pretty bad and I expected to run out of suckers quickly...) Specifically appalling is the outcome with Chenis: 1 alive out of the original *infected* shipment of 40. All could have been easily saved if I knew what I know now...


One final detail: in most cases what I learned will prove useless *as treatment*. This thing is impossible to diagnose unless you have a large number of fish dying from it, and most people will simply attribute losses of a few suckers to something else. OTOH, for those who chose to quarantine with drugs to reduce the chances of problems later -- and I most certainly will -- this should allow to improve the protocol.

I don't know what the final protocol will be yet at this point, it will include either 4 or 5 drugs and the right protocol may be different for the "home" or "store" environment. I'll be fine-tuning it for a while yet.

[Azmeaiel]

I noticed something very odd on a few of my loaches before they died of something like patchy (the ones in the tank with the livebearers). on the gastro's there seem to be two small barbels on the underside of the lip near the top of the mouth. before they got to the 'loosing strength' stage I noticed these had become red and inflamed on some, the mouth seemed to become a little inflamed over the next few days where they would start sitting on the gravel a little more and stop eating. After this the patchy would start and the fish would die. If the fish did not just drop dead

I later added some albino BN's to the tank and one became lethargic and developed these markings.



she recovered with tetracyclene treatment , a male wasnt so lucky that didnt recieve the treatment in time. some of the loaches that had this mouth disease didnt get to the patchy stage. It seems to most noticably effect sucking fish that need to attach to something, and that stick to glass where we can see them. anyone notice anything similar in the loaches?

[mikev]

As it happens, I have two albino BN's in the tank where the dieout occurred, and they were not affected.

This means exactly nothing, unf:
The markings on your pleco do look like a septic bacteria, it tends to be gram-neg just like Jim's patchy, and I aggressively treated with Maracyn2 (==minocycline, a close relative of tetracycline, which is the right drug for septic stuff and for Jim's disease). So I might have eliminated this before it had a chance to show the symptomes. None of the dead suckers had red marks.

Such red marks were seen recently on a gastro shipment (most fish affected) and were cleared out with tetracycline.

There is another suspicious link on symptoms. I lost one of the lizard loaches (same arrival as the chenis), with the body inflated and floating --> excessive air/some kind of swim bladder disorder? This death occurred more than a month ago, relatively early in quarantine, so I was not too concerned. But later, a kuhli developed a clear case of swim bladder disorder too. The fish recovered on its own within two days, but I remain suspicious that my symptomless gram-pos sucker killer is actually a swim bladder disease in other fish.

(I think I should state that I don't believe that there are too many hilstream-specific diseases in nature).

[Azmeaiel]

strangley enough the Bristlenose also develop something similar to 'patchy'. they get ulcers that start with patches then these start shedding from the middle so the wounds look a little like an onion ring pattern. Again this can be treated with tetracyclene. There is little if any info on this disease that can be found on the internet or even in fish disease books. It seems to be very selective though and usually takes out weaker fish. strong fish seem to get off unharmed even if in the same tank.

[mikev]

Interesting.

I **think** I saw what you described at a store yesterday. I was looking for a girlfriend for my brown BN... they had a few BN's, and a couple with marks like you describe. All males, so I was not considering buying, but I'll be on lookout for these patches now.

Thanks for the info.