Is Ich twice possible?

[Faviaphile]

I don't have experience with this personally- (at least not yet) but I was thinking about disease resistance, often after having an infection once and being cured it is unlikely that the same animal or human gets the disease again. You know, why vaccinations are effective.... etc.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen a fish get ich twice. I know I never have in my own tank and after a new sixline I bought showed symptoms in QT I began wondering if his immune system has now built protection from future exposures. Does anyone have confirmation on this?

I know that with our fish the common problems are ecto parasites and fungus but I wondewr if they can build resistances to these with controlled exposure.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could give our fish a mild dose- like a vacc. in quarantine to help prevent future outbreaks?

I don't know much about this topic but my curious mind had to ask some RCers what they think.....

 

[TerryB]

People have been trying to develop a vaccine for ich for some time now. Yes, fish can develop a limited immunity to ich for a period of time. However, fish can get ich repeatedly if you don't get it out of the system, or you keep bringing back in with infected fish. Do you quarantine?

Terry B

 

[mr. clown man]

yes they can catch ich twice its hard but if you dont qt they can catch it again

 

[Faviaphile]

Thank you for your responses.
TerryB- Yes I always do, he is in QT currently I'm not worried about him, he's recovering very nicely.... I know QT works great but I'm very curious about immunity in fish.
So, you both have fish that have had ich twice? What kind of fish were they and how far apart were the outbreaks? In all my years of reef keeping I've never had a fish get ich twice!! I'm so curious to know if this is common.
Where can I read more about this topic? Know any good articles on the vaccine that is being worked on?
Thanks in advance!