Mycobacterium? Something else?

[RobertTheNurse]

You do realize medical background here-yes?

Yes! And I love it. I as well am medical.

 

[Huskymaniac]

Can you send some of the tissue to a microbiology lab to see if they can culture the pathogen? If you have M. marinum in your tank you should be careful and make sure to wear gloves. Non-tuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infections can be very challenging to treat (see this information at National Jewish Health, which is one of the premiere clinics in the US for treating NTMs: https://www.nationaljewish.org/cond...bacteria-overview/types/mycobacterium-marinum). While M. marinum may be common in fresh and saltwater, I can't believe it is found in all aquariums. Aquabiomics has done microbiome testing and has a panel for common pathogens including mycobacteria. I haven't seen anyone post their results with M. marinum.

How do explain a negative M. Marinum test from Aquabiomics but somehow still managed to get it from scraping my hand in my tank.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

How do explain a negative M. Marinum test from Aquabiomics but somehow still managed to get it from scraping my hand in my tank.

Myco is very slow growing and pretty fastidious to culture. 6 weeks give or take...but you can find it in almost every aquarium, even in frozen seafood. The lab I use generally just says if it comes back as acid fast, it is presumptive for myco. I doubt any lab is doing routine screening for myco.
My work gives yearly TB tests and one year, myself and another staff person had a suspicious reaction and had to have a second type of test to clarify the results...we were evidently positive for M. marinum. Next year we were fine.

Jay

 

[Huskymaniac]

Myco is very slow growing and pretty fastidious to culture. 6 weeks give or take...but you can find it in almost every aquarium, even in frozen seafood. The lab I use generally just says if it comes back as acid fast, it is presumptive for myco. I doubt any lab is doing routine screening for myco.
My work gives yearly TB tests and one year, myself and another staff person had a suspicious reaction and had to have a second type of test to clarify the results...we were evidently positive for M. marinum. Next year we were fine.

Jay

Yes. I actually had long talks with Bob Fenner about this. I personally caught myco from my tank. Took 7 months of antibiotics to clear the infection. After I caught the infection I had all 3 of my tanks environmentally DNA tested through Aquabiomics specifically looking for Mycobacterium Marinum. There were no M. Marinum DNA sequences found in any of my tanks. We did find some other types of Mycobacterium. One of them was M. Novacatrense and the other was M. Holistican. I 100% agree with you that it is almost inevitable that are aquariums harbor this bacteria to some degree.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Yes. I actually had long talks with Bob Fenner about this. I personally caught myco from my tank. Took 7 months of antibiotics to clear the infection. After I caught the infection I had all 3 of my tanks environmentally DNA tested through Aquabiomics specifically looking for Mycobacterium Marinum. There were no M. Marinum DNA sequences found in any of my tanks. We did find some other types of Mycobacterium. One of them was M. Novacatrense and the other was M. Holistically. I 100% agree with you that it is almost inevitable that are aquariums harbor this bacteria to some degree.

Yeah, I just say “atypical mycobacterium” now, there seem to be new species all the time, I’ve never even heard of the two you mentioned. Chelonae, fortuitum and marinum are the three I know we’ve seen.
Jay