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Hi lately i have been seeing my tiger barb change from stripes to almost all black. Should i worry? What is happening?

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That depends. If it is an illness we'd need a picture.Its not a symptom specific to one ailment, it could be anything from mycobacterium all the way to skin slime diseases, or an organ failure due to nutritional problems.

Tiger barbs, often because they are so inbred and selectively bred are also e to hypermelanism as they age . This is not something to worry about per se, it just means that as they age a lot of the melanin pigments in the skin become very strong in producing black. This leads to almost totally black or very dark fish. I had a shoal of blue-green tiger barbs that went entirely black in their 3rd year of life.Basically its pretty normal for a lot of commercially bred tiger barbs to end up with dark colouration later in life, its genetically preditermined.

If youre worried, post apic with as much detail of the skin surface as you can manage.

Failing that all the measures you can do to improve things in case of disease are increase diet variety and quality, check the o'l water readings for usual problems, and maybe treat preemptively with something like maracyn.

If it is tb youll need to procure some meds with metronidazole in and administer them, and since you are a youngster and in a vulnerable group for tb mycobacterium infection, perhaps get an adult to do your cage maintenance until any given infection has cleared up. Wash your hands with antibacterial wash, and never , ever start the syphon for water changes with your mouth. Should the fish die , get an adult to dispose of it, and do not perform a home post mortem yourself. Mycobacterium infections in humans can occassionally be fatal, although usually things work out if detected by a doctor and antibiotics given in time. I have known people hospitalised from fish tb infections.

i guess its because of age. my TB's are commercially bred and have the weird problem you described, the scale discolouring, not the disease. As for the siphon, i start it with a shake of the tube. THanx LHG(longhairedgit)

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Wow. I knew how vicious TB can still be for humans (especially given the fact that the dear little microbe is now evolving immunity to most antibiotics); but I had no idea that even the piscine variety was dangerous to us.

Indeed it is bruce, Mycobacterium marinum , a strain once associated only with marine fish is now a proven zoonotic, and also detected regularly not only in freshawater fish but also in the tubers of some aquatic plant species. Common sources are now goldfish and koi bred in thailand and isreal.

It does not infect the lungs as you might expect in human forms of TB , but can lead to disfiguring granulomas on the skin, and a lot of pain, ache, and joint and muscle stiffness, and general weakness. Severe cases can be debilitating, and although difficult to diagnose accurately , it responds well to antibiotic treatment.Given its origination, aerosol based vectors of transmission are possible, but the highest level of transmission is simply from the mycobacterium entering open wounds on the hands of people who regularly work with fish.