# Skinny disease



## rkings4d (Feb 12, 2014)

Hi all
I just had a terrible experience with buying a pair of full grown pundamilia 1m 1f, from a local and realized too late (basically when I got them home), that they were severely emaciated. I put them in the quarintine tank, and immediately phoned the breeder, who told me they had been that way for the last 8 months and were perfectly healthy and had been medicated with everything under the sun, so they considered it ok to sell them.!!! I took the fish back the next day, and dumped a half a jug of bleach in the tank, and threw out my net, siphon etc. that had been in contact. Then the next day I was in petsmart buying a new siphon etc, and I looked for the african cichlids, there were none. I asked the girl working there, and she said all their fish had not been doing well lately. there was one tank with some emaciated kenyis, that looked like they were about to croak. Someone had put goldfish in with the plants, and they all looked sick too (bony heads, sunken guts)., The other pet store that sells africans in my town is terrible too, all thier fish look skinny, and some are not even swimming, I ever saw an oranda goldfish that looked like it was developing h. septicemia. When I asked the staff there they just looked at me like I was crazy!
What is going on here, I am now afraid to buy fish, I can't seem to find any info on the internet or anywhere on how to cure this, is there like a wave of disease running through fish farms in asia/florida right now? I was also wondering if poor water parametres could be a problem, everyone I talk too at my local stores tells me not to adjust the kh, gh, ph, because these fish are all aquarium bred, but I think its doing internal damage to these fish. I read a study that neon tetras kept at too high a ph showed damage on their internal organs.
Sorry for the rambling but I'm just trying to understand what seems to be a widespread problem, that seems to be getting worse, and is defineately aggravated by these scoundrels that won't admit the problem exists and keep selling these diseased fish.


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## Robin (Sep 18, 2002)

I'm no expert on skinny disease but I think part of the problem is that so many fish diseases present the same or similar symptoms so that often we don't even know what we're looking at. There's so many reasons why a fish would appear skinny that without more research you just can't be sure what the fish in the fish store are actually suffering from. Fish come into a fish store already stressed from all the travel and varying water conditions that they are more prone to disease period.
As far as your concern about skinny disease becoming a more wide spread problem that's getting worse, probably not, but I do agree with you that it is a difficult disease to diagnose and treat, that's for sure. 
Robin


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## rkings4d (Feb 12, 2014)

Thanks for the input. I geuss as long as I quarintine I shouldn't worry too much. however there really is no where to buy fish here!! cheers


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