Coral Beauty Overnight Ick

[chaosfinity]

Ok, my coral beauty only has ick at night. When the lights come on in the morning he is covered in ick mouth to anal fin. And within a few hours he is no longer covered in white but with unpigmented spots. I suspect the other fish are stressing him at night he is with 3 damsels. Any thoughts to it being anything else?

[montoya]

Chaosfinity:

One other disease to look at is Lymphocystis. The only reason I mention it is I have a pigmy angel (C. Heraldi - False Lemonpeel) with white spots right now. My first thought was Ich but I've seen plenty of Ich before. For whatever reason these spots didn't look quite like Ich (except for being bright white) and are also in different areas on the fish then Ich usually is.

For this reason I searched for other causes and Lymphocystis came up. Coincidently it most frequently infects Angelfish and Butterfly's in the pet trade.

The bad news: it's a highly contagious virus that has no treatment. Several good points however:

1) It rarely kills or causes any other long-term harm to an otherwise healthy fish. The fish looks ugly for a few weeks/months but that is about it.

2) It will usually run its course in several weeks to months then the spots will go away. I'm told the fish will build an immunity to the virus so re-infection generally does not occur.

3) While the virus may remain viable in the tank it will supposedly infect only fish of the exact same species or in some cases closely related fish. This would indicate non-angelfish in your tank will not be infected.

Just something to consider. I'm still not sure if my fish has Ich or this Lymphocystis. I'm doing the same either way though - nothing for now. The fish appears otherwise healthy and active, eats well and seems to not notice in the least that it is covered in spots. I'm going to assume for now that it is Lymphocystis. I've been feeding good food and keeping up with the water and assume this will pass within the next couple weeks.