Gerald Bassleer examines a Ranchu goldfish with heavy breathing and raised scales that hides severe internal disease: mycobacterial infection in the spleen and liver, plus bacterial colonies destroying gill tissue. Lab confirmation costs about $150 and takes days. Treatment is limited to antibiotics for secondary infections or euthanasia, with prevention focused on breeder stock and live feed sources.
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Case number 51.
September 28, 2022.
About 150 US dollars.
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Foreign. Today, our case number 51 on all the cases I've been working on on fish diseases. We encounter sometimes very common diseases like white spot or gill flukes. But sometimes we encounter some diseases which are not usable found on an easy way. And that's why I'm sharing you this information. I collected from checking this Ramchu goldfish, which had tubercles in the organs. When we see the fish swimming in the fish tank, some had heavy respiration, some did become weak, listless and eventually die. But in general, the fish were swimming around. But the daily losses were not so happily seen. We don't like losing fish, but in general, nothing obvious could be seen with the naked eye. Even if you look at the fish closely in our collecting tube, we could only see a heavy respiration. The fish was suffering from a gill problem. He had some red markings at his pectoral fin, but some had sometimes raised scales. But nothing else we could see except that we start doing our observation with the help of a microscope and doing a dissection and collecting the material. Like here, the gills. We saw here on the gills, you see here on the right, the bacterial infection which is causing necrosis or deterioration of the gill tissue. Also this part here, we see the top of the part, all with bacteria making closing up the gills so that the fish will suffocate and die from this kind of problem. Sometimes we find columnaris bacteria in this kind of group of bacterial colonies which are infecting those gill lamellae. But when they dissected the fish and we looked at the organs and we squeezed here on the left spleen and on the right the liver, we could see all those nodules like tubercles, many of them taken up healthy tissue. So the organs were in very bad shape. That you can notice here at the microscope at 200 magnification, you can see the large tubercles here, some small ones that on the right to liver, small ones and big ones taking up healthy tissue. So the organs, the spleen and the liver are working very badly. And this is most likely due to tuberculosis or mycobacterium. A laboratory for you can determine that takes a few days and it cost you maybe about 150 US dollar. But that's something you think about particularly when you're a breeder to find out what is going on. So for that kind of fish, what kind of treatment can I propose? Well, like I said, sometimes disease does not show up for our naked eyes and a good examination will be helpful. The very badly affected fish which are suffering and dying, you better put them asleep. You can use for that narcomor plus a treatment with antibiotics. You can ask your vet can be very helpful to control the secondary bacterial infection, so the fish might live much longer. And so fish do live a long time with those tubercle infections, because some have it a very little bit, a very tiny infection, and other ones have a very serious infection. And over the time it can become serious, of course, it can grow. The treatment of the Mycobacterium has not shown any good success, because as you can see here, those tuberculos are encapsulated by a capsule or by the organs who are defending themselves against the bacterial intrusion. But at the same time, it's very difficult for the medications to penetrate in that capsule. So it's problem to treat successfully against Mycobacterium. You can feed with our doctor Basler Baishersfoot Foucault. That can help the fish to regenerate, to defend themselves and to become stronger. Do not give any other food. Meanwhile, very important that you look for the source of the problem. Usually that's the breeder, the farmer who is breeding the fish with parents which had already the infection. Also, by feeding food like mosquito larvae, which are in many cases carrying the mycobacterium, can also be a reason that infection becomes more serious. So some things to think about when you're dealing with an infection like this. And I try to explain that in many cases that when you are dealing with fish diseases, your examination is very important. Of course, some diseases we define with the naked eye, but like in this case, we had to go to check for the liver and the spleen to find the problem. And here it was. Looks like a Mycobacterium, which is a nasty disease for our aquarium fish. Okay, thank you for watching.
