IMPORANT: Watch For These Disease Signs

[Sakura8]

No name yet. For a while, we thought it was something called "fur coat syndrome" but it turns out that was totally bogus. Fur coat syndrome doesn't exist.

[Fredsterbit]

There's a lot of inbreeding in bettas. I think this may be one of the causes.

[lelei]

Well whoever studies the fish that comes up with the disesases that already have diagnoses maybe we can write to them descibing what people are witnessing..and put a few pictures in an email to the company..they might want to furthur investigate and do some research of their own to get a possible diagnosis..if they see in pictures an get an idea of how many bettas its inflicting they may even know of somone who may want us to send them to them for that purpose..there has,to be a company who specializes in fish illneses..and who vcan research it more..

[Fredsterbit]

That is a very good idea. I'll see if I can find someone that has researched the matter in some way.

[prodrumernate]

seems like very little is known then especially it not even having a temporary name for it..

[toddscire]

I was just at a big shipper in BKK today and he has been getting some fish from us for a while. He said that the infection we are seeing is very easy to treat but with only high end meds. He treats the fish with 500mg Zmax pills or AZITHROMYCIN. At 500mg pet 10 gal of water. Every 24 hours for 5 days. Then he bring the temp to 89 for 2 days with clean water and looks for any fish that need a second run. It seems this is the same for a lot of Thai exporters. So this is not a color thing I am told. Hope this helps.

[Sakura8]

Interesting. But where to get azithromycin? I just checked aquabid and no one has it there. Does he treat at the first sign of necropsy on the fins or does he treat all new fish as a matter of precaution? Now to see where to find azithromycin . . .

[Badjer]

I'm fairly certain I just lost a Thai import to this. Here's a link to the thread I made: http://www.bettafish.com/showthread....21#post1267021

People weren't kidding when they said this struck fast...

[Silverfang]

that does look like the graphite colour we've seen... :/ sorry about your boy, he was quite pretty looking otherwise.

[Sakura8]

Most of the cases so far have only been on the fins, no saddleback. It would just eat right up the fins and onto the body and they'd be gone within hours. I wonder though . . . what if there's a strain of columnaris that blue bettas carrying a certain gene are particularly susceptible to? So far, the general consensus has been that it could be columnaris but it's a form we never seem to encounter in non-blue fish. Only a necropsy or tissue sample could really tell. If we could only identify the strain of bacteria we're working with.