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After keeping fish for many years my tank has contracted neon tetra disease. Ive never had any diseases within my tank, which is quite lucky considering I never use a hospital/quarantine tank.
So to my question Ive read that NTD is spread by spores, if I remove all the fish from the tank and quarantine them and let my filter and tank to continue running without any fish will the water and filter be safe for new fish?

Thank you in advance,
Dan.

Simple answer- NO. The tank will require a complete clean and stripdown and cleansing with harsh chemicals like bleach or high temperatures. This includes the filter media too, which usually needs replacing. Every pipe, every surface, every bit of decoration has to be cleansed. Plants have to be thrown away etc,its a nightmare really.

There is no way you can keep a tank in operable condition and retain the cycle if you are trying to get rid of this sporazoan parasite. The spores are tiny, very hard to kill, and get just about everywhere, and into out any and every porous surface. Sometimes spores and cysts can last for months, even sometimes years before there is no chance of them reinfecting a new host.

Thats the trouble with ntd , and why it is so feared, especially by shops, as getting rid of it once discovered could require a complete strip down of their entire system.The less reputable stores dont bother of course, and claim to have performed all sorts of miracle cures rather than actually take responsibility for controlling the disease properly.

The only alternative answer is to keep fish in that tank from now on that cannot contract the disease, and are never likely to come into contact with fish that can for at least a year to 18 months. Even if you do this you must never so much as even share cleaning apparatus from that tank with other tanks, and youll have to wash your hands painstakingly and thoroughly with surgical standard handwash every time you touch the water.

Are you sure its neon tetra disease? Lots of people confuse it with lots of other diseases. What are the symptoms , and why in particular do you think it is NTD?

While NTD is an atrocity, I'm not certain it's quite as apocalyptic as LHG says. The organism itself can apparently be killed when free-swimming in water by several different chemicals, according to reports I've received by various people: Neomycin, "antimalarials" (unidentified, but maybe quinine), and the British drug "Protozin" (although its site cautions that it's harmful to Loaches). My advice right now is to euthanize all NTD-afflicted fish (satisfying yourself first, of course, that it really IS probably NTD), because it seems to be spread mainly through fish eating infected corpses; then try dumping those drugs into the water and see if you can keep most of your remaining fish alive.

Additional note: DO NOT, under any circumstances, use Nalidixic Acid as an anti-NTD drug, no matter what other people tell you! (See my "Nalidixic Acid Apocalypse" thread below. I've now found out the hard way, twice, that this damn poison is one of the very few things that actually manages to be even worse for fish than NTD.)

Im not disagreeing with bruce here, between us weve acquired quite a bit of NTD knowledge,and I respect his opinion immensely, but I think the point was that kickflip dan here wants to know if he can use the tank safely again if he waits a week or two before using it again. I dont believe that he can without either reinfecting treated fish, or infecting new ones. He might get away with it, but without the tank cleansing he cant be sure.

If NTD was easy to wipe out it would not have been adaptable enough to spread to so many places in so many different systems or cause so much damage. There is a neonatal stage for NTD and its true that this can be killed, but there is a dormant stage from the stage one part of replication in its life cycle that can remain in evidence unnaffected by meds for may months. This is the very tool of adaptability it uses to keep surviving captive conditions and most efforts to eliminate it. The spores at this stage are inert as far as most meds are concerned but will activate if ingested by a fish during scavenging and browsing.

In full phase infections the cycle of a corpse is the most important way that new spores find a host, with the predation on the corpse by other fish leading to the most efficient transmission possible. However when dead fish even uneaten ones who have been affected rot down or explode from the stomach the spores get everywhere. I strongly suspect aquarium plants are the number 2 source of transmisssion, and the "backup" plan that works for NTD when the direct infection cycle is broken. Batches of aquarium plants are quite probably the way most people find NTD getting through to their stock even when they do observe quarantine.

I will concede that there is a massive difference in the success rates of transmission between a few spores on a plant being incidentally ingested, and the "corpse trap" that NTD naturally uses for its main route of infection, but I tend to assume if there is a spore in a tank and there are fish such as tetras that will feed in an incessant experimental way, (they will literally pick at any small morsel) there is always a chance thatinfection can and probably will reoccur.

I know perhaps this makes me seem a little paranoid, and lord knows bruce has the right to be paranoid about this too, he has lost more fish over this than I have,but I cant help feeling that when I come across something that kills so many fish I can be forgiven for adopting a slightly overkill blitzkreig approach.

I for one will not like many shops do, assume it is so easily killed apart from the dormant stages, and then conveiniently forget about the dormant stages. Dormant aint the same as dead. Ever seen one of those movies where the baddie keeps getting up? Im one of those slightly strung out people who everyone ignores who always says " shoot it with a bazooka while its down!" . But then if everyone listened , the horror movie would be over... lol

NTD gets through, keeps getting through, and keeps causing damage, but not on my shift

(oooh I came over all clint eastwood then )

Seriously though, I guess you can only do what youre willing to do, and what you find reasonable.It depends what you consider acceptable risk. Eventually the long term resistance of fish to NTD will only improve with regular exposure I guess. Ive managed to save a few fish myself, but even then I think genetics gave me a helping hand. What I do know is though, whatever my fish might contract out of all the millions of omnipresent parasites and bacteria, it wont be NTD. That I can rest eay about, even though it was a complete pain in the rear, and a slightly expensive to cleanse out. My own circumstances were different to most, being that my experiences with NTD were deliberate is a more controlled setting than average and with a system I didnt mind being dumped out if necessary, but if NTD had hit one of my major communities I too would be trying not to just tear it all apart I guess. Its always going to be a heartbreaking situation.

One question here Id have to ask dan about though, is how does he think his fish contracted NTD, was it direct transmission? How long was it since he acquired the fish and how long since then to the first noticeable signs of infection?

The thing we can agree on is that this is a godawful disease, and that by itself it is an excellent argument for NEVER buying Neons (as opposed to Cardinals) in the current Age of Aquariums. One thing that's begun to worry me: Are there other commonly available store fish who are now also carriers? I can vouch for the fact that NTD goes after Glowlights and Cochu's Blues very quickly.

Thank you both for your very detailed answers to my question, Ive come to a conclusion whilst it may be risky. Its a calculated risk, OK here it is = clean my filter change the media, wash my gavel, completely breakdown the tank (which I did about 2 months ago !)remove all surviving fish and plants and euthanasias them and after the tank has been rebuilt, slowly reintroduce cheap healthy fish using a quarantine tank this time and see how I go. If fish start dying from NTD symptoms i will move to plan B which is to go mental cleaning anything and everything to do with my tank.
Thanks again for your help very much appreciated.
Dan.

No problem dan, but I would appeal to you again, be DEAD sure its really NTD before you knock any fish on the head, misidentification is really common, and id always regret euthanising a fish if I didnt have to.

Yes, I'll definitely agree with that -- particularly if you really are planning to stage mass euthanasia of all the fish in your tank. There are some bacterial infections (notably, I believe, columnaris) that can somewhat mimic NTD's symptoms.

Well there are not many fish in the tank and I have seen them picking at the 'corpses' before I could remove them so Id rather be safe than to try and medicate Illnesses that I have no knowledge of. It wouldn't be like a mass murder, just about five fish that look like there Ill anyway.