Neon Tetra dying in bulk

[SnottyCat]

Help!
My neons are dying left right center...over the last week I had neons dying everyday...yesterday fished out 7 dead neons. Suspect I may have Neon Tetra Disease (NTD) as some of the weaker fishes seem to have whitish bellies and tail muscles.
For now my other fishes are fine, including other type of tetra fishes (ie: green neon, black neon, rummy nose etc). One glass shrimp died (also turned whitish), as I suspected he ate an infected dead fish.

Not sure what the cause was....
I did have some fish food that turned bad before I realized it. Also introduced 2 small glass shrimps about 1 month ago.

What to do now?
I've removed some of the sicker fishes, but NTD is supposed to be a parasite and spread by spores(?)
Did 2 x 50% water change over 2 weeks (one was part of regular water change)

Any advice? Tearing down the tank is not exactly an option as it is a well planted tank with other inhabitants.

Also does anyone know how long can the NTD parasite spores stay alive in a tank with no suitable hosts? Don't want to introduce new neons later only to have them get infected by dormant spores

[felix_fx2]

Hi,

The neons recently introduced?
The tank matured planted?

The common practice when you see a fish that looks sick is to isolate it outside where it cannot spread illness to healthy ones.

If you bought bulk from lfs. Before you introduce them formally into the waters, take a good look at them. I personally float the bags for at least 10-20 minutes and use 3-5minutes and see if any sickly ones.

[SnottyCat]

Tank was started in Oct, and has been running stable for many months now with little changes to the tank.... suppose you can call it a mature planted tank.
The neons were one of the first residents, with the last of them introduced during CNY. No new fishes were introduced for many months except for the 2 small glass shrimps which were put in directly from a feeder stock batch about 1 month+ ago.

Perhaps disease tompang on the shirmps?
or could it come from the fish food that I did not realise had gone bad? (it was from a pepper shaker type bottle, and it was only when the holes got stuck and I had to open the whole bottle that I could smell the stink from the bad food)

Immediate problem now is how to deal with this disease, now that the outbreak is well underway.... so far only the neons were affected (apart from 1 dead glass shirmp which I think ate an infected dead fish), all other fishes, even the green neons, seem ok. I've removed the suspected sick neons, but not sure for how long the disease will stay active in the tank.

Welcome any advise or even recounts of similar outbreaks.

[Jhontan]

I once had this encounter and I realized that it was the pesticide that killed them. I fed the bug caught at home to other fishes. The pesticide rested on the bug when sprayed.