Ich is always in your tank, like the mange parasite is always in your dog. Any healthy animal stands a good shot at beating it; hopefully, completely suppressing it.
Ich is always in
your tank because you chose to live with it, not eradicate it. A healthy specimen can live through it but its still there. The ich is constantly going through its life cycle still in your system while you have any fish in the tank.
This aquariast's best advice is get to work. Water change your a** off. Everyday. 10 to 15 percent. As long as it takes. Usually around a month for me. Agitate your substrate just before water changes. Of course, pristine water replacement is critical.
With all that wasted work you could of gotten rid of the ich long ago. All that water could of been used for TTM instead of adding back into a ich infested tank. The cysts on your LR and substrate are not removed when you do a water change. Other than increasing your water quality, this does nothing.
Feed good and feed often. Mysis. Squid. Bloodworms. Quality flake. More Mysis. UV sterilizer running 24/7 will absolutely help. Multiple UV's, if you can. Quarantine? Nope. Proves nothing. Leave a fish alone in a sterile tank, then throw it into your fully stocked reef in three weeks? Really? Have at it. Not for me.
In a sense you are just feeding the ich well. Fish eats food, ich feeds off fish. UV sterilizer does help with baddies in the water column but this is something to help your tanks condition not a solution to the problem. No quarantine huh? That is terrible advice. What do you mean proves nothing? Proves that you aren't going to introduce brook, velvet, or whatever else into your main display?? Your idea of QT is just putting a fish in a sterile tank for 3 weeks then dumping it in the DT? I would recommend you research and read up on proper quarantine techniques.
I don't mess with salinity, temperature and sure as heck do not dose or treat. Fallow tank??? Goofy. Let a reef tank sit idle for 70-90 days? Not a chance. Just wave the white flag! Take the tank down and buy a parrot.
Why would you think people who do QT - messing with salinity, temperature, or dosing on your DT has anything to do with getting rid of ich? The purpose of FALLOW is to ensure all ich cysts have completed their life cycle and died off as they could not find a host fish.
I've been keeping fresh and salt tanks for 30 years and have made my mistakes. In EVERY instance, ich appeared due to me adding one too many fish and the ensuing stress. Overpopulating, in my experience, brought the ich parasite out within two days of adding that last fish.
You have had ich for 30 years it appears, it surfaces each time when they stress or may due to many other factors.
I've had four or five bouts with serious ich. None have ever lasted more than 30 days and I've never lost more than 30% of my stock. Face it, you're going to lose, at least, a couple, but you have an obligation to fight like hell to save the rest.
Those 5 instances were just the same infestation surfacing at different times. You never even should lose a
single fish to ich if you TTM with new arrivals.
Ich can be tenacious. I prefer to be just as tenacious in fighting it.
:deadhorse1:
Hypo / hyper salinity, dosing, gaming with temperature, et al, all strike me as way too passive and ultimately are nothing more than "Hope it works" .
None of those things are 100% succesful. Some strands of ich can surive lower salinity than your fish can. Raising temperature is for freshwater ich not marine. Although it can adjust their life cycle's time. I suggest looking in the fish disease section of the forum, there are some really good threads on the subject of ich and TTM.
Got ich? Good luck and get busy. You'll beat it.
Yep if you want to beat it you will pull your fish into QT and perform TTM, ultimately putting them in a sterile QT after the process while going fallow on your DT.
