Siniperca chuatsi, a mandarin fish, is a unique species of freshwater fish in China. It is one of the most economically important freshwater fish due to its delicious taste and high nutritional value. In 2019, the total farmed production of S. chuatsi in China was nearly 320,000 tons, with an output value exceeding RMB 20 billion (Li et al., 2021). Mandarin fish are mainly farmed in Guangdong, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces of China, with the highest production in Guangdong. The expansion of the scale and density of mandarin fish farming has led to a variety of pathogenic microorganisms causing disease outbreaks in mandarin fish (Sun et al., 2017). A number of bacterial, parasitic and viral diseases have been reported from the mandarin fish. Among the viruses causing infectious diseases in fish, the highly infectious and lethal viruses Infectious Spleen and Kidney Necrosis Virus (ISKNV), Siniperca chuatsi ranavirus (SCRaV) and Siniperca chuatsi rhabdovirus (SCRV), have been reported in the mandarin fish and cause considerable losses to mandarin fish aquaculture. For example, SCRV outbreaks in hundreds of fish farms in Guangdong were reported, which caused death of more than 10 million juvenile mandarin fish (Zhang et al., 2020). Therefore, the prevention and treatment of these viral diseases has become an urgent problem to be solved in the mandarin fish aquaculture.