How contagious is lymphocystis?

[shelburn61]

I've had a swallowtail angel with Lymph in quarantine for a few weeks. Lymph apparently goes away on its own under good conditions. My quarantine system is very small and basic. I think she would be much happier and better able to fight off the infection in my main tank?

My only concern is infecting the existing fish. None are related species: flame hawk, wrasse, black clown.

Should I wait for all signs of lymph to disappear first?

[wooden_reefer]

Not very contagious.

I always use UV in a tank when one individual gets cauliflower disease, which is said to be a virus.

[hankthetank]

Actually lympho is extremely contagious.Any fish housed in a system with lympho is probably infected.But lympho is a virus much akin to the herpes virus in humans.If you are infected with the virus you are always infected,but you don't always display symptoms,unless something triggers an outbreak.Fish with lympho recover from the lesions if housed properly,but they still carry the virus and future outbreaks are possible if the animal is stressed.

[billsreef]

Lymph is a viral infection of the connective tissue, it's the fish version of warts. While it can transmit from fish to fish in poor environmental conditions, under most conditions it is not very infectious. Even in well stocked LFS holding systems it does not easily spread from one fish to another.

[wooden_reefer]

Originally posted by hankthetank
Actually lympho is extremely contagious.Any fish housed in a system with lympho is probably infected.But lympho is a virus much akin to the herpes virus in humans.If you are infected with the virus you are always infected,but you don't always display symptoms,unless something triggers an outbreak.Fish with lympho recover from the lesions if housed properly,but they still carry the virus and future outbreaks are possible if the animal is stressed.

You may be right, but I have not seen more than one fish has it in many croweded tanks.

[Crush Coral]

Interesting. I just put 2 Ocelaris Clowns and a Mandarin Goby in my reef tank. These are the only fish. I had looked the fish over at the lfs but did not see the lymp on the gill of one clown. The disease got worse so I set up a quarentine tank to treat with copper for a single ich spot. A couple days later I noticed the fish did not look good and the tank smelled. Under futher observation I found that a snail had transfered w/ the rock when I set up the tank and the copper killed it fouling the tank. If it can go wrong it will!!!!!!!! I moved the clowns back into my reef tank while the quarentine tank recovers and then I will put the clowns back in the Q. tank and treat with Quick Cure for kicks. I now wonder what the future holds for my reef tank and future fish adds I do. Will I keep getting Lymph in addition to ich? I am leading toward buying an inline UV light since I run a Rena XP3 for filtration. Any thoughts?