Ich, should I treat?

[wii64brawl]

So after being through two tank moves within a week, it seems my pufferfish has developed ich. He is still eating like a pig and acting normal. The other fish in the tank are a small frogfish and my dwarf moray. All are eating and acting normal. All fish seem healthy (besides the ich), so I feel they may be able to fight it off.

My train of thought was that if the fish were healthy enough to fight it off, and I didn't add any more fish (which I wasn't planning to do anyway), then the ich would die off. What do you think? I had ich in my old 28g nano cube, and the fish managed to fight it off, but the tank was only up for a few months after and the fish were sold, so I have no clue whether or not the ich would have come back or not.

 

[jamesbaur13]

If you read the ich stickies in this forum you'll see what you have to do to have a chance at eradicating it. The thing is not everyone has the finances or the room to do the necessary protocols, which is perfectly understandable.

Another thing you should know... there is no known fallow time that insures 100% eradication. You'll see percentages like 99.5%. Some have been bit by that .5% and some are suspecting that ich has evolved to lay dormant for longer periods than has been previously known.

One thing you need to think about though... it doesn't just die off on it's own. It'll always be there. If a fishes health is compromised in any way it can and often times will come back. Something like a heater going out or water quality getting out of whack... this is now compounded by the presence of ich and the fishes survival rate is diminished.

With all that being said, if it were me, I wouldn't treat it unless the health of my fish was failing.

 

[MrTuskfish]

If you don't treat and eradicate ich; it will (almost) always return.