the "tiger pestilence" ?

[MikeS]

hi!

saddest days ever
Some weeks ago I got a shipment Datnioides polota (AT) from Vietnam.
I put them in a quarantine tank, added salt and put some medicine against ichthyo and other bacterial illness in. They do very well and after 2 weeks they where completely acclimatized.
But... then one week after quarantine they changed thei behaviour.
They get very shy and dark coloured. Then the first of them died one night.
Every day more and more tigers died, I added salt, other medicine but now there are only 3 tigers left. So 15 died(!)
The period between the first signs for an illness and death of the tiger gets faster and faster. Now you can see the following:
- Tiger get's very passive
- some hours or one day later you can see complete white very big "blotches" on them, especially the lips gets complete white
- only 1-3 hours later the tiger began to "stagger"
- 3-5 hours later: tiger is dead

The dead tigers had an open mouth but no stress colouration! Only these white blotches. Sometimes only very small (not ichthyo like!) and sometimes it's only a small white line.

I think it's a very aggressive illness and I didn't find any way to heal the tigers.
What do you think: What is it?
My idea is a special virus illness which can only infect perches, beacause all other fish are ok.

Thank you for your help and sorry for my English, I think I made a lot of mistakes
http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=thMx..&search=acclimatized

 

[Silvia15]

wow, looks nasty, sorry for your loss...

never seen that before, good luck finding out what they are... gave me goosebumps...

 

[christ4paul]

wow that sux.. sorry for your loss. well lesson learned, never buy anything from that vendor again. my guess is, when they shipped the fish they kept the good ones and sent you the sick ones knowing that you wont be able to do anything.

 

[neurospeed]

Oh crap man. Sorry for your lost. Did you try Primafix or Melafix? If it was fungal, Primafix could have helped.

 

[TCZeli]

Sorry to hear, GL on the last 3.

 

[Bogwoodbruce]

That really sucks,

 

[Miguel]

Awfull experience. Your description reminded me of the "Discus plague ", but the pix does not confirm it.....

 

[MikeS]

I think I have found out the illness
The Epizootic ulcerative Syndrome (EUS)!
symptoms are:
White blotches (often with ulcers)
bloodshot areas
and apathy

All symptoms of my tigers. (well, they had no ulcers, but these white blotches...)
Normally EUS is a specific illness for Colisa sp. but it can also infect other fish. In spring this year, I've heard about plans for a law in europe, that imports of some species (channa, colisa, mastacembelus...) should be forbidden.
EUS is not curable yet. So it's a very dangerous illness, with less information. For any website belong to this, I would be thankful.

A useful information I found it is that the australian perch "murray cod" is also very fragile for EUS caused by the "Megalocytivirus".
I don't find any reports about EUS infected Datnioides, but I think when a murray cod can be infected with this virus, his relative, the tigerfish can be infected, too.
And the symptoms are absolute comform.

I will added more salt to the tank with the last(!) tiger, maybe that will help, because EUS is only reported by freshwater fishs.

So, that are the last datnoides for me...
That loss was to hard

 

[tropheus]

that could be eus , although most times it will look worse than that before they die , eus is just about 100% fatal and no cure known , i have only seen it before in snakeheads ,where it looked far worse than that but that is how it started out,

i will move this to the deseise section as it effects more than just dats and someone else may well of come accross this ,and be able to shed further light


cheers col

 

[pupumole]

i wonder thats wat happened to my NGT too :| it sorta matched ur description of the symptoms... i saw my ngt get those white spot... then started staggering as u described, then..... boom, dead :|
sux :|