Ich always present, truth or not

In direct response to the title question.

In direct response to the title question.

There are a couple of really good articles pinned in the disese forum etc. Don't just read them, digest them, question them, use your head and think through them........ it is a truly worthwhile exercise.

So many people read something, take it as gospil, and then apply it on blind faith. It doesn't matter how qualified someone is, and how qualified you are not...... use a bit of common sense and objectivity.

Now..... the whole "ich can't survie past 6 weeks without a host" thing - according to whom? That is a statement based on statistical probability. It should read that "chances are, ich can't survive.......". It depends on the strain..... some die off with a couple of weeks..... others can persist for months...... it is not a gauranteed fact - it is a probablility.

What is fact, in my opinion, is that any ich outbreak in a closed system has arisen from a limited number of parent cysts. THat is to say, if you have a fuly stocked tank, and add 1 fish - and shortly after get an outbreak - it is most likely (and again this is a probability) that the "infected" fish only had one or two parent cysts on it. So, the gene pool is very limited shall we say. Now, if you do not introduce further strains, this strain will quickly become biologically inviable........ I think studies have shown it takes about a year...... after a year the "inbreeding" becomes such that the strain is no longer viable and it dies out......

Disclaimers:
(1) there are many ways to skin a cat
(2) I am far from "qualified" to make these assumptions - but most here are also not qualified.

Summary - when dealing with probabilities, you are always taking a chance....... I don't know what the maximum recorded life cycle is of ich, but I bet its longer than 6 weeks....... 6 weeks is at best, a "very strong liklihood" situation....... so if you want to get hung up on putting your faith in statistics or not, then you can or cannot argue the "ich can be irridicated" concept. I used to be of the school - not any longer, through experience, and "out of the box" thinking.

HTh

Matt
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13478328#post13478328 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Paul B
Matt, I think that is one of the best responses I have ever read on RC
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Thanks Paul - glad someone agrees. Unfortunately for us all, this hobby is all about probabilites rather than absolutes and hard facts..... "tangs is reef safe" - really? always? no tang, nowhere, has ever munched on a coral......??? Folks like rules. They like regualtions. They like blaming rules and regulations for not regulating enough when the things go wrong in spite of following the rules........ but when things are going right, they complain about too much regulation....... who / what is wrong - the regualtion or the regulator.... perhaps its the interpretation or willful manipulation of same??? echo's of Wall Street maybe???

Two of my life's motto's, which quite often find particular relevence in this hobby:
"rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men"........ and "no man is at all times wise".
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13477922#post13477922 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Paul B
I don't think ich paracites ever read that they should not infect fish in a bare bottom tank.
Click to expand...

I've kept ich sucessfully for years in my BB tank - mine haven't read that either it would seem........ :D
 
Re: In direct response to the title question.

Re: In direct response to the title question.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13478263#post13478263 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mattsilvester
There are a couple of really good articles pinned in the disese forum etc. Don't just read them, digest them, question them, use your head and think through them........ it is a truly worthwhile exercise.

So many people read something, take it as gospil, and then apply it on blind faith. It doesn't matter how qualified someone is, and how qualified you are not...... use a bit of common sense and objectivity.

Now..... the whole "ich can't survie past 6 weeks without a host" thing - according to whom? That is a statement based on statistical probability. It should read that "chances are, ich can't survive.......". It depends on the strain..... some die off with a couple of weeks..... others can persist for months...... it is not a gauranteed fact - it is a probablility.

What is fact, in my opinion, is that any ich outbreak in a closed system has arisen from a limited number of parent cysts. THat is to say, if you have a fuly stocked tank, and add 1 fish - and shortly after get an outbreak - it is most likely (and again this is a probability) that the "infected" fish only had one or two parent cysts on it. So, the gene pool is very limited shall we say. Now, if you do not introduce further strains, this strain will quickly become biologically inviable........ I think studies have shown it takes about a year...... after a year the "inbreeding" becomes such that the strain is no longer viable and it dies out......

Disclaimers:
(1) there are many ways to skin a cat
(2) I am far from "qualified" to make these assumptions - but most here are also not qualified.

Summary - when dealing with probabilities, you are always taking a chance....... I don't know what the maximum recorded life cycle is of ich, but I bet its longer than 6 weeks....... 6 weeks is at best, a "very strong liklihood" situation....... so if you want to get hung up on putting your faith in statistics or not, then you can or cannot argue the "ich can be irridicated" concept. I used to be of the school - not any longer, through experience, and "out of the box" thinking.

HTh

Matt
Click to expand...

I have to agree with what you have said just based on experience.

Every time I tell people that ich survived either through hypo at 1.008 (using three different calibrated hydrometers) or in a fallow tank for 8 weeks they claim I messed up somewhere because ich cannot live through hypo and cannot survive 8 weeks without a host. It had to be one of the two in my case because it happened. Its that simple. There were no other factors involved. No new fish, no fish left in the display which in fact was dried and bleached, 90% of my LR was dried out and then "cooked". This was all during a move where my fish were in a hospital tank and my display tank was not even set up. So based on these probabilities, I should not have had ich. The probabilities failed me in that sense. Yet people will continue to argue that its not possible :rolleyes:

The biggest problem I see with these probabilities is that they are missing one very important factor and that is the strain of ich. I read once how many strains there is thought to be and I forget the number but it was large. So what makes it impossible for some strains to have evolved to live longer without a host or adapt to low salinities. Maybe decades of infecting brackish fish have lead some strains to deal with large and quick salinity swings from freshwater to salt. Im not saying its necessarily probable but it is possible.

One thing Matts post made me think of is what if the ich I have in my tank was brought in by my Burrfish which often live some of their juvenile lives in brackish river waters. Going back to my theory that maybe some strains are resilient to low salinities. Perhaps even just a few of the strongest cysts in my burrfishes gills were able to survive the hypo and are what I have in my tank now.

Thanks Matt, I think your post reminded me to think "outside the box" as you have and remember that we are dealing with probabilities.

One more I just thought of is how old some of these studies may be. Strains of Ich like many parasites surely could have evolved since many of the studies we base our treatments on were conducted. Just so many variables I guess.

I am going to stick with what is working for my fish right now...
 
Now..... the whole "ich can't survie past 6 weeks without a host" thing - according to whom? That is a statement based on statistical probability. It should read that "chances are, ich can't survive.......". It depends on the strain..... some die off with a couple of weeks..... others can persist for months...... it is not a gauranteed fact - it is a probablility.
Click to expand...
Excellent point. While the chances of 6-8 weeks being enough are great, the parasite has been documented to live for as long as 72 days without a host in rare cases.

I think studies have shown it takes about a year...... after a year the "inbreeding" becomes such that the strain is no longer viable and it dies out......
Click to expand...
There's conflicting information on this one. Some people have had trouble maintaining long-term cultures and others haven't. Personally, I suspect the difficulty was due to the fish developing immunity, not the lack of genetic diversity of the parasites. Cryptocaryon reproduces asexually, so there's no inbreeding. The genetic diversity shouldn't matter. However, if you introduce ich once and the fish develop resistance, as long as you aren't introducing naive fish, more parasites, or compromising the immune systems of the fish, the parasite number should continually decline given the low success of theronts even in naive fish.

In other words, I wouldn't count on this happening.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13479520#post13479520 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by black_majik
Thanks for the read justinpsmith
Click to expand...

Sure. Hope it helps you understand how fishes immune system can fight off parasites. If you are interested in a more in depth read, I have some links but honestly they get kind of confusing unless you really know your stuff which I really don't ;)

My brother studied biology and majored in marine biology while we both lived at home, so I was around text books and journals all the time. At the time though, I really ignored it all but now I kind of wish I had taken an interest in what he was doing. We still talk all the time about this stuff but he has been away for many years now on dives and is not always easily reached.

What I was getting at, is that if I did not have him around, I would never have thought fish could fight off parasites with their immune system.


BTW, I think this has become a very informative thread :D
 
I have been telling people for years that although ich has been studied to death, there are factors about it that we still have yet to understand. We still don't know for sure why sometimes it becomes epidemic and other times it could live comfortable in a tank such as mine for 40 years and cause no harm.
It could be an immune response, I have some trouble with that because even new fish I add to my system do not get it.
It could be metal accumulation in an older tank, it could be that, as was said it dies out from inbreeding, it could be the way Britiny Spears combs her hair but whatever it is, we are definately not sure.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13479369#post13479369 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
There's conflicting information on this one. Some people have had trouble maintaining long-term cultures and others haven't. Personally, I suspect the difficulty was due to the fish developing immunity, not the lack of genetic diversity of the parasites. Cryptocaryon reproduces asexually, so there's no inbreeding. The genetic diversity shouldn't matter. However, if you introduce ich once and the fish develop resistance, as long as you aren't introducing naive fish, more parasites, or compromising the immune systems of the fish, the parasite number should continually decline given the low success of theronts even in naive fish.
Click to expand...
I stand corrected :D ....... or sit corrected, as the case may be ;)
Yes, that sounds more sensible - I forget where I read it (again, probabilities, probably....) but it made sense at the time that bascially after 12 or 13 months or something, scientists found it diffcult to maintain viable cultures of ich....... for whatever reason.....
I suppose sort of what I was getting at is that if you have a fully stocked tank, and are worried about the odd ich spot, but its nothing serious, then if you let well alone (read as closely monitor) after about a year or so, the instances of "the odd spot" will gradually tend to zero.......... that is of course until you introduce a new strain :) ........
 
On other point - in our euphoria of realising that a little bit of ich doesn't equal impending doom and the need for tanks to be stripped down and treated, wholesale, we must not forget that q-tine is very important and very effective.

My fear here is that someone will read this and say "well if thre's no gaurantees, why bother"....... you should bother because:
If you were to take a fish with a weakened immune system into your display, if its going to get ich, chances are it will get ich bad..... this will then spark an epidemic. I mean your existing fish will have strong immunity, and can fight off the odd cyst thingy that it encoutners in the water column or whatever...... but if you have one fish in there peppered in ich, then when all those cysts erupt the water column will be overwhelmed with free swimming ich critter thingys...... and your healthy fish will be bombarded by attack. An analogy (I like analogies)....... if a person walks around "near" a swamp, they might get bitten my mosquitoes half a dozen times...... they probably won't get malaria from that...... BUT, if they decide to wade through the swamp, unprotect, at night, they get bit 100's of times and te chances of malaria is increased massively.......
Thats sort of a weak analogy, but hopefully it illustrates the point. A weak fish introduced can become a breeding for an ich epidemic and provide a platform for it to infect otherwise healthy, strong fish. Hence the reason why q-tine is as much about boosting the new fishes health and immunity, as it is about treating any potential disease it might have.
 
Thanks for all the good information here. I am still learning about Ich and how to treat it...

I am unfortunately dealing with ich right now on a PBT that I have had in QT for over a week. He's been in Hypo at sg 1.0085 for a few days now, and yesterday he had a huge ich outbreak, the first I've seen in that tank. Could I have a hypo-resistant form of Ich????

I started this thread in the New-to-the-Hobby forums http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=13493623#post13493623

But figured some of the ich-experts in this thread might be able to help me make sense of how an ich outbreak occured during Hypo??? Should I abondon the hypo and goto Copper (once the SG is back to normal of course)?????

Appreciate it.
 
I thought that copper was more stressful than Hypo for a tang... and also that Copper was more likely to ruin the biological filtration???

Im still learning so I welcome the criticism... I might do it differently next time!

that said I am not opposed to switching plans. Seems like hypo did me no good... should I just raise the SG back up and then dose copper???? I've heard that copper is more lethal at Hypo-salinity, but I dont know why or if its actually true...
 
Re: In direct response to the title question.

Re: In direct response to the title question.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13478263#post13478263 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mattsilvester
Now..... the whole "ich can't survie past 6 weeks without a host" thing - according to whom? That is a statement based on statistical probability. It should read that "chances are, ich can't survive.......". It depends on the strain..... some die off with a couple of weeks..... others can persist for months...... it is not a gauranteed fact - it is a probablility.

Matt
Click to expand...
Life cycles of parasites are not statistical probabilities they are long proven facts. Different life stages and the related conditions and hosts for each life stage have long been identified and documented. That being said, there are variations within genus' and of course the occasional outlier, but probability has nothing to do with it.

Mutations and surviving mutations (i.e. evolution), now that is pure probability and more likely what is happening with ick susceptibility, immunity and length of life cycle for certain strains.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13493947#post13493947 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by RyanBrucks
I thought that copper was more stressful than Hypo for a tang... and also that Copper was more likely to ruin the biological filtration???

Im still learning so I welcome the criticism... I might do it differently next time!

that said I am not opposed to switching plans. Seems like hypo did me no good... should I just raise the SG back up and then dose copper???? I've heard that copper is more lethal at Hypo-salinity, but I dont know why or if its actually true...
Click to expand...

Copper has little effect on your biological filtration. It mainly impacts inverts (will kill them) and scaleless fish don't like it too much either (like eels).

I found over the years that one of the least harsh copper treatments is Coppersafe (Mardel). It is chelated copper sulfate and is not as irritating to fish. Other copper treatments are non-chelated copper sulfate. Use it according to the directions and you should do fine. DFS sells it on line and many LFS carry it. Just bear in mind that this can only be used in your QT if you display is a reeftank. NOthing in the QT tank (other than the fish) can ever be place din your DT or the copper will leach out and kill your inverts.
 
Re: Re: In direct response to the title question.

Re: Re: In direct response to the title question.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13494009#post13494009 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by lpsluver
Life cycles of parasites are not statistical probabilities they are long proven facts. Different life stages and the related conditions and hosts for each life stage have long been identified and documented. That being said, there are variations within genus' and of course the occasional outlier, but probability has nothing to do with it.

Mutations and surviving mutations (i.e. evolution), now that is pure probability and more likely what is happening with ick susceptibility, immunity and length of life cycle for certain strains.
Click to expand...

Life cycles are not statistical probabilities > agreed, to an extent. Thats largely not what I meant though. But the documented cases that I have read say things like:
"after 30 days 90% are dead, after 35 days 96% are dead, after 38 days 99% are dead, with 100% no live specimens being found aline after 42 days"
.... now I have compeltely made that up .... but thats the sort of thing you read..... and they are statistics.

Where the probability comes in, is that when someone makes a statement that "ich cannot survive past 42 days" (despite it being a known fact that certain strains, be they mutations or otherwise, can survive past that threshold), what they mean to say is "in all liklihood, your system has one of the more common variants, and hence will almost certainly not survive past 42 days" ..... that is probability.

Hence, why I say, the "rules of thumb" that we apply to ich treatment ARE statistical probabilities > that is, they will probably conform to the statistical profile compliled from studies......
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13493947#post13493947 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by RyanBrucks
I thought that copper was more stressful than Hypo for a tang... and also that Copper was more likely to ruin the biological filtration???

Im still learning so I welcome the criticism... I might do it differently next time!

that said I am not opposed to switching plans. Seems like hypo did me no good... should I just raise the SG back up and then dose copper???? I've heard that copper is more lethal at Hypo-salinity, but I dont know why or if its actually true...
Click to expand...

How true this is, or not, I do not know. But I have read articals claiming negative side effects of copper, mainly relating it to digestion problems; apparently, copper treatment can decimate populations of "friendly" bacteria in certain fish species gut - notably angels and tangs. This later manifests itself in one of two ways - HLLE or Death due to malnutrition.

The theory being that the copper kills the bacteria needed for digestion, which then means teh fish cannot get the nutrients it needs from the food it eats. Powder blue tangs seemed to be particularly suseptible...... eating well, and dying after 6 months with fat bellies..... but unable to extract the nutrients they need....

My description above is crude, but that was basically when they were getting at > how true it is or not, I do not know. But generally, copper is quite a harsh chemical, and it should be used cautiously.

Having said that, I found myself in your sitution a year ago, with a powder blue tang. I increased the s.g. as quickly as possible (at a rate slightly higher than reocmmended), and treated using cupramin, initially at a slightly lower dose than recommended. The wisdom of my method is questionable - but it worked, and the fish is still alive and kicking!
 
On a side note, I recently read in another thread that bio filtration will not exists at salinties as low as needed for hypo, according to the poster the the bio filtrate stops at 1.14 and it order to do hypo you are resorted to daily water changes. Just what I read, not nessarily fact.
I am not say you should not QT, thats not the intent of this thread, but more a better understanding of ich and its lifecycle adn hopefully to clean up some misunderstands and mysteries, ie my friends tank.
 
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