Is this Ich or another parasite?

bassinprof

New Member
Hi everyone,
This began showing up on my butterfly fish about 10 days into quarantine. I thought the quarantine tank had copper in it, but I hadn't redosed it for about 3 weeks so maybe the copper level had gone down too much to kill the parasite. I've seen a lot of freshwater ick (I'm new to saltwater) and these bumps seem larger than what I would have expected. Rather than being the size of salt grains, the smallest are probably the size of 3-4 salt grains and those on the bottom fins are much larger than that. The ones on the bottom fins are more like cysts than what I would expect from ich. Since they appeared about 4 days ago (and I redosed the tank) they haven't spread and are (maybe) getting fewer in number.
Thanks.
 

flower

Well-Known Member
Look in the disease section. there are some pictures you can look at and see if it matches what you are seeing.
 

bassinprof

New Member
I've looked at the pictures and agree that it's probably lymphocystis. The growths aren't caulilower like, but they are irregular and sometimes cyst shaped. It's funny because about a month ago I had a damselfish come down with something similar and so I quarantined all my fish (only 3 fish at the time) because I thought it was ich and didn't want to treat the display with copper. The damselfish recovered and I transferred all of those fish back into the display and then the qt tank was fishless for about a week before I added the butterflyfish that then came down with it. Do you think it's possible that the qt tank is infected which is why the butterfly got it? Sounds unlikely but it also seems that lymphocystis is fairly rare to have two successive fish come down with it. Also, I purchased the butterfly from a different store than the damselfish.
 
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