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It sucks when one finds out about things once its too late but thats usually the case. This is a beautiful hobby but evertime one learns about do´s or dont do´s its because its too late....

I believe I have Neon Tetra Disease in my Tetra tank, which houses Black neons, Von rio, cardenals, neons, lemon tetras, blue tetras and couple other fish....

The reason why I think I have such a disease is, I just lost 4 black neon tetras in a matter of less than 1 day. Water was tested and is pretty much ok, tad of ammonia, tad of nitrite, tad of nitrate, but lttle quantitites. All the other fish seem to be doing fine but these 4 fell in a hurry.

I started feeding them tubifex bout a week ago, but Im beginning to regret ever offering them to anyone Now I find out about this disease and the best thing I can come up with is the dreaded NTD.... The spine on two of them have looked very funky, one today was a zig zag of a fish...it looks like it is indeed NTD.....

Question now is. What should I do? Any and all help would be appreciated....

NTD just doesnt kill that quickly, id suspect either that the tubifex contained a poisonous chemical or material they picked up, and this poisoned the fish directly , or uneaten tubifex rotted and overloaded the filter. It wouldnt be the first time thats happened.The water tests your picking up on might be the tail end of an ammonia spike, they often fade quickly if you have an efficient filter,but equally the damage can happen quickly too.

Ammonia and nitrite really need to be zero.

Black Neons need excellent water quality. I have found them to be very sensitive to ammonia and nitrite.
However, there are many other things to consider. 1) How long have you had black neons, they do not seem to transfer all to great. I seem to lose about 20% when I purchase a new batch. 2) Did any thing else in the tank show these signs? Were there any other losses? 3) What other fish were the black neons kept with?
This may not solve your problem, but it may help narrow it down.

"There is also a Clown Pleco in this tank some where. I am telling you, HE IS IN HERE."

they were fed tubifex the first time about a week ago....

they live with a bunch of other tetras and a couple other fish, all seem intact.

theyve been with me about 2.5 years I believe.

I didn't find black neons to be sensitive to water quality and I lost none in transport even with the store being an hour away. However a few months later the entire school of 10 fish was wiped out within 2 days by a bad bacterial infection that also claimed most of my congos and all but 2 emperor tetras. It never affected my gouramis, various bottom feeders, cyprinids, hillstream loaches, or angelfish. I hit the tank with every medication I could get my hands on and it had no impact. The fish would occasionally seem listless for a few hours before death but often just dropped dead with no marks or wounds. I'd count them, find them all swimming normally, leave the room to get a drink, and come back to a dead fish. It was debated whether it was NTD or at least a related illness but never determined for certain.

While it could have been due to an ammonia spike(why do you have any ammonia or nitrite anyway?) if you even suspect NTD or other serious bacterial infection then grab a spare tank, a cheap 10g, or even a plastic storage container and remove any potentially sick fish immediately. Also remove any dead fish as soon as you see them. It will spread very quickly and especially if a dead infected fish is eaten by others. Quarantine or just putting down sick fish before they can die in the main tank is essential if you want to save any of the fish. It also can help to do water changes and gravel vacs to remove as much bacteria as possible.

In my experience (which, on this subject, is much more than I would like), NTD doesn't kill nearly that fast -- and it DEFINITELY always shows major skin marks on the fish (pale, whitish areas) before it kills them. I think the odds are indeed that some kind of poison got into your water. However, in my experience, Black Neons are tough little fish -- my current three even came through my current Nalidixic Acid disaster unscathed (see thread below).

One thing in your account made me prick up my ears, though: those Tubifex. Years ago I had one serious outbreak of what I am reasonably certain was Whirling Disease in my tank -- and that was after I had started feeding my fish for the first time with Tubifex, which is the carrier for this organism. (The Tubifex was freeze-dried; but with spores as tough as the ones for Whirling Disease, that's no guarantee. I have never fed any Tubifex, of any sort, since.)

As its name suggests, Whirling Disease affects the fish's nervous system -- causing it to swim in whirling spirals -- and sometimes also causes spinal deformities; but it doesn't produce skin discolorations of the sort that Neon Tetra Disease does. Fortunately, it has one major Achilles Heel that NTD lacks: the WD organism, in its free-swimming stage, is extremely vulnerable to temperatures ahove a certain range. If you see any signs of WD, euthanize the fish immediately (so that the other fish won't eat the corpse), crank up your tank temperature to over 82 deg F (28 deg C), and you will probably be able to knock out the disease completely. And my advice to everyone: stay strictly away from Tubifex, in any form.

Sham, i would suspect the amounts of Amm, Nit were due to cleaning the media filter about a week ago.

I agree with the tubifex comment, unfortunately we read and learn about these things after its too late. If one asks at the LFS, one is told tubi is good for fish, etc etc etc.....

With my recent experiences Im sticking with "food from a can" fish love live foods but they seem like a nightmare to me....

Hey guys, my first neon tetra has officially died today.... Im almost afraid to look into the tank as Ill probably find more dead...

Bruce, you pointed out cranking the temp above 28 degrees to kill the disease? Care to explain a bit more on that. Would it potentially harm any of the other wish, and would it actually kill the disease? I ask because Ive read online that there is no cure for NTD....

Man im desperate here

Raising the temperature will kill the free-swimming organism that causes Whirling Disease. Unfortunately, it will NOT kill the similar sporozoon organism that causes NTD (and which, unlike WD, causes pale skin markings).

I do note the statement of "LongHairedGit" down in my "Nalidixic Acid Apocalypse" thread below that he has had surprising success killing off the NTD organism with "antimalarials" and a British drug called "Protozin" which, unfortunately, seems not to be available in the US -- but which is available in other countries, perhaps including your own:
http://www.waterlife.co.uk/waterlife/protozin.htm
http://www.waterlife.co.uk/index.htm#wwd

He hasn't yet told me what his "antimalarials" are; but the most famous one of all is quinine -- which is available as a fish medicine (although you may have to do some poking around the stores to find it), and which I can verify is harmless to fish. Since these organisms are fairly closely related to malaria, this is plausible.

And while the recommendation of the clerk at my LFS that Nalidixic Acid can be safely used to treat fish proved disastrously wrong, the other antbiotic that he recommended mixing with Nalidixic to kill the NTD organism -- Neomycin -- does seem to be harmless to fish. So that gives you at least three drugs to try if you really are dealing with NTD.

Remember, though, that -- whether you are dealing with NTD or the more easily stoppable Whirling Disease -- your goal is NOT to try to save fish that are already showing any visible symptoms of either disease; it's too late for them. They must be immediately removed from the tank, so that the other fish won't eat their corpses -- which seems to be the main way both diseases are spread -- and then you have to utilize a temperature hike (for WD) or one of those experimental mixtures of drugs (for NTD) to try to kill off the free-swimming organisms in that part of their complex life cycle and thus keep the disease from spreading to your other fish.

And, really, NTD now seems to be so damned common in store-bought Neons (raised on communal fish farms, where it can be easily spread) that I now stick to Cardinals instead. (They are somewhat more expensive, but they are also still wild-caught and so much less likely to carry NTD -- and, in fact, they seem to have some surprising natural resistance to it.)

So I went to sleep last night fearing the worst. I checked this morning and everyone seems ok, no deaths....

Interestingly, last night the fish i found dead had his cavity where organs are perfectly cut out, with almost surgical precision, which Ive never seen before.

Ive seen dead fish eaten by peers and what not and they are usually quite messy, this one looks like someoe got a scalpel and gutted him out. I suspect one of the apple snails must have done it as Ive never had one before till now and Ive never seen such a "wound"

I would rather elevate the temperature of the water to 28 degrees if you think that might work than introducing medicines in the tank, the thought of that scares me although if it might work Ill give it a try. For how long should I have the temperature up to 28 degrees? Will a couple days suffice? Just 1?

I want you to know I appreciate your efforts in helping me out. Thank you.

It really depends on what's killing your fish. NTD does have one dubious positive aspect: it's very easy to provide a negative diagnosis on. If your fish aren't showing washed-out, pale areas on their bodies, they don't have it. (On the other hand, to further complicate matters, there are some curable bacterial and fungal diseases that also produce pale whitish areas.)

If none of your fish are swimming in whirling patterns, it's pretty safe to say that they7 don't have Whirling Disease -- and in that case, raising the tank temperature won't do any good. (Indeed, it might do harm in this case -- Neons, like Red Phantom Tetras, somewhat prefer slightly cooler water than most tropicals, around 72 F or 22 C. They tolerate "normal" tropical temperatures nicely, but I don't know how they'd react to a real temperature hike.)

My own recommendation -- which, given my track record, may not be worth much -- would be to leave the temperature where it is, put in some Neomycin (a harmless antibiotic that can knock out a lot of bacterial and fungal diseases which might be the real villains in this case, and might even do some good against NTD), and then just wait for a few days, observing your fish and periodically checking their water chemistry (especially pH and ammonia). Remember to take the charcoal out of the filter for a few days while the medicine is in there (which you can safely do), and let us know if anything more turns up.

Agree with Bruce that NTD is easily mis-diagnosed. Even up to now, I not sure if the congo tetra I euthanised really got NTD. But I'd rather make a wrong decision than having the whole tank wiped out. Now I'm running a QT all the time. This will give the sick fish a better chance..

If you have applesnails or any other inverts remove them to another tank or container of water before treating with medication or increasing the heat. They don't handle the really high temps or nearly any medications well. You'll kill them off real quick.