My clown has had lymphocystis since I got him. Yes, I bought a seemingly healthy fish but shortly after arriving home he started showing the tell tale lesions.

It has been about a month and a half, and is slowly getting more lesions spreading around his body, and they are getting bigger. He is acting normal, but now I am concerned he will spread it to my other fish.

Should I just cull him (peacefully please!) to avoid having him suffer and spread the disease throughout the tank? I figure the other fish haven't caught it yet, but it could be any time now.

And if so, what is a good method? I've thought of the fridge-to-freezer method to slowly cool his body down. And no sick ideas- i'm not slapping my fish up against a wall or anything!

fridge freezer....

or you could qt and try to more aggresively treat....you try any antibiotics?

lymphocystis is not fatal or very contagious. it is usually a symptom of stress. typically a 5-7 minute freshwater dip repeated daily for about 3 days will knock it out.

also i read on ultimatereef i think that freezing can burst all the bloodvessles before they die which i assume would be amazingly painful
the least painful would be putting him in a bag and dropping something on him
fast and painless

I would qt and try different methods of treatment first. but i know from poison fart frogs that one way to cull them is to soak in vodka (they absorb it through their skin and go peacefully) does anyone know if there is something similar for fish?

I have seen the vodka method suggested for fish too, but in form of putting the fish in a small amount of water and slowly increasing the amount of vodka to the fatal point....

Before I did that I would try the FW dips....get him into something where he can be asily recaptured and do them daily for a few days then get him back home....Make sure you are feeding something with garlic, it is not only an appetite stimulant, it's also a powerful immune system booster....

try garlic first and look for the ultimatereef thread about euthanasia i think its called they use i think its clove oil or something in certian doses diluted can kill the fish

EDIT wtf it posted my reply 2x

once again, lympho is NOT fatal and there is no reason to euthanize the fish over it. it's like warts, not gonna go away on it's own but once it's gone it probably won't come back. lympho shows up on fish stressed from shipment, typically butterflies and angels, all the time. a formalin3 or fresh water dip WILL get rid of it.

Thanks for a more definitive response....

I would set up a quarantine and place him there for several weeks and monitor his condition. Fish can come back around from this, but it takes time and no stress. I think funeral preparations are a bit hasty.

Good luck!

Good! I will do the freshwater dip b/c he is very easy to catch...unlike everyone else! I figured it wasn't very contagious b/c no one else has it.

On the euthanasia though, my guess is the vodka might be kinda painful b/c of the alcohol...they're not drinking it, its touching all their membranes and such. IDK if thats accurate though, just a thought. And freezing, they would probably be dead before their blood vessels burst because their body fluids freeze at temps below the freezing point of water.

BUT i'm not euthanizing hiim yet if fw dips will work for sure! Otherwise he's acting normal...so of course I'll try to just get him better! I can do the garlic stuff but I already use Boyd vitamins. And his appetite doesn't need stimulating lol...he eats more than ME!

no euthanizing. my clown goby got it 3 weeks ago. i put him in a quarantine tank. feed it everyday with mysis soaked in garlic. then healed. i love garlic

Wait for real no one caught poison fart frogs?????

Clove oil is what we used when I worked in a lab to euthanize fish for later dissection. Freezing bursts the blood vessels and causes ice crystals to form in the brain preventing detailed analysis with an electron microscope however if you have liquid nitrogen that is used to preserve rat brains for analysis so you could use that. Clove oil is your best bet though you just put the fish in the oil and they fall asleep and then die. Veterinarians use it to anesthetize fish before surgery.

+1 dont give up so easily


!!!!!

Carl from aquariumproductsUSA.com (or something like that), 30 yrs in aquarium service industry, said that lymphocystis should pass fairly soon and never return. You still have good chances.

Damsels are tough as nails, I bet he comes around. I have had a damsel who had its tail fin and a pectoral fin completely torn from it and it bounced back. Still lives in a 55.

WTF?!?!?! Who operates on fish??????

Electronically tagging them for population studies, migration studies etc.

Ah, that makes sense. I wouldn't consider that surgery though.

I should've updated this earlier but the clown passed away :/ He stopped eating good and got lethargic, and within another day or so he was a goner. He did keep getting more and more spots though. Everyone else is good, and its been a few weeks.

There are a number of veterinarians who do. Look around on the NC and UGA vet school websites. There are some pic there of interesting fish procedures. Many public aquaria now have veterinary support and that occasionally includes surgery from time to time.

Generally speaking it involved MS-222 (finquel) for anesthesia, not clove oil, and euthanizing fish in that setting is generally done with an overdose of a buffered colution of MS-222, but eugenol (clove oil) has been used both as an anesthetic and for euthanasia. As has been posted, freezing is not considered appropriate any longer. Especially when clove oil can be readily had by anyone, and MS-222 can be had from a veterinarian.

In this particular case I would not euthanize the fish, but rather optimize his living situation and the lymphocystis should resolve on it's own. Once an a while there are secondary bacterial infections but this is not the norm. The formalin or fresh water dips are questionable, but might help debride the lesions - it will not clean the fish of the disease, and could potentially stress it further. Were it me I would probably skip that (always have) and work on optimizing the husbandry, making sure that there is not something stressing the fish that you are over looking. If the fish is looking otherwise rubust and healthy, a fresh water dip might be helpful just to make the thing look better - but clowns can be quite sensitive to hyposalinity so have a care with the duration of the dip.

Keith



Are you sure it was Lymphocystis? Brooklynella and Amyloodinium can look similar at times.

Keith

When you have a $10,000 koi you don't just euthanize it when it has a tumor you operate.

Now who has a $10k koi

Koi from the Ikarashi koi farm in Japan are priced at $100,000 wholesale, still not the most expensive though. These are of course fully grown and have spectacular patterns. Of course you also need to take into account that in Japan these koi are looked at as national treasures and major status symbols and not just a fish. So exorbitant prices are put out there to both keep away buyers who aren't serious koi keepers and to attract people who can appreciate the price on these fish.