Originally Posted by
Alight
I know it is not Myxobolus cerebralis (the protozoan actually shown to cause whirling disease in trout, salmon and other fish). I actually am a microscopist, and a neuroscientist and scoped some of the fish and found no sign of Myxobolus (we do have this protozoan in many of the streams near us, and I do a lot of trout fishing, so I could have contaminated my tanks, but this disease is not supposed to often affect warm water fish).
It could be a virus. I actually also was an electron microscopist in the past, and could look for viruses in the brains, but have never had the free time to do the scoping when the fish had the disease, and I never really thought about a virus in the past. There were too many other diseases I did know about that I though might be the culprit. I had not seen the Shlapobersky et al. paper until today (thanks DJW). If I knew of a treatment for this herpes virus, I might find the time to look for it.
The paper is from a group in Israel, so I'm not sure how the disease would get to Utah, but I guess it could be more common than we think.