Sick Cardinal

[MelBegin]

I have a sick Cardinal on my hands and I was wondering if anyone had any insight as to what I might be dealing with.

He lost his color about 3 weeks ago, I initially kept him with the rest of the school because he was still eating, swimming, and behaving normally. After several days of no color I got worried and removed him from my main tank. He has now been in a hospital tank for 3 weeks and has shown no signs of getting better or worse.

He has lost all his red and most of his blue, he seems to look emaciated but he appears to be eating. His body looks "twitchy" or "curved" in a way it shouldn't be.

All my water parameters are at normal levels. Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and PH are great and the tank is kept at 76-78. None of my other Cardinals have shown any signs illness.

Other than placing Indian Almond Leaves in his tank as a natural remedy, I haven't tried anything else yet.

Any suggestions?

[Dorrie]

It's a good thing you quarantined, and I just hope you did it fast enough, because with the current information your provided, the prognosis is grim

A spine that suddenly curves without a physical injury (like getting trapped in a filter intake or picking a vicious row with another fish) and discolouration are signs of two disease feared by all fishkeepers: Fish Tuberculosis (fish TB) and Neon Tetra disease.

Neon Tetra disease is a degenerative parasitic infection.
Here is a description of what I'm talking about: http://www.aquarium-pond-answers.com/2007/02/neon-tetra-disease.html
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/neondisease.htm
But, Cardinals are supposedly immune to it, so if you're quite sure it's a real Cardinal, then it's not that.

The other possible culprit is Fish TB, which can be spread to humans (you can get a skin infection from fish TB, you don't get human TB [different bacteria], but still...), so you must be very careful yourself.
Here is an in-depth article about it from another fish club: http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Keefer_FishTB.html
And another link: http://www.petfish.net/kb/entry/170/.

Sadly, both disease are incurable and fatal, and are contagious at varying degrees.

I really hope I'm wrong, but that's what comes up with the information provided. I encourage you do some reading or maybe post pictures if you can. Keep us posted.

[MelBegin]

It's a good thing you quarantined, and I just hope you did it fast enough, because with the current information your provided, the prognosis is grim

A spine that suddenly curves without a physical injury (like getting trapped in a filter intake or picking a vicious row with another fish) and discolouration are signs of two disease feared by all fishkeepers: Fish Tuberculosis (fish TB) and Neon Tetra disease.

Neon Tetra disease is a degenerative parasitic infection.
Here is a description of what I'm talking about: http://www.aquarium-pond-answers.com/2007/02/neon-tetra-disease.html
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/neondisease.htm
But, Cardinals are supposedly immune to it, so if you're quite sure it's a real Cardinal, then it's not that.

The other possible culprit is Fish TB, which can be spread to humans (you can get a skin infection from fish TB, you don't get human TB [different bacteria], but still...), so you must be very careful yourself.
Here is an in-depth article about it from another fish club: http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Keefer_FishTB.html
And another link: http://www.petfish.net/kb/entry/170/.

Sadly, both disease are incurable and fatal, and are contagious at varying degrees.

I really hope I'm wrong, but that's what comes up with the information provided. I encourage you do some reading or maybe post pictures if you can. Keep us posted.

I am 100% positive they are real Cardinals. I have read a little bit about real Cardinals getting NTD in extremely rare cases; however, I doubt this is the case with my Cardinal.

I had considered TB, but when I did a Google image search none of the results I saw matched what my fish look likes. It's a very mild kink in the spine, and most of the pictures showed pretty bad deformities. Have you heard of fish with TB having much less severe deformities?

[Dorrie]

I've luckily never had to experience fish TB first-hand, so I can't say what affected fish look like.

However, the spine curving could be gradual, since not all fish affected with the disease are reported to have skeletal deformities.

Maybe this fish always had a slight kink due to genetic causes and only recent scrutiny has brought it to light?
Because if the kink is not a symptom, but an unrelated issue, the diagnosis field reopens, since many things, including plain stress, can cause discolouration in fish.

I would suggest you add a little aquarium salt to the QT tank and check daily for more symptoms or worsening of current symptoms, like emaciation, pop-eye or inertia.
Maybe try to feed the fish a treat of a few freeze-dried bloodworms or the like and observe its behaviour and swimming.

Meanwhile, just be careful when you handle things in the QT tank, just in case it does turn out to be fish TB.