My question reefshadow is . If your fish are imune to ich and lets say 90 days have past with no ich visible, then all the ich parasites are dead. This must be as good as a quarantine.
As Freed stated, they can live at very minimal levels in the fishes gills, waiting until conditions are right (or wrong, lol) to reinfect the entire body of the host. I focus on optimal diet, minimal stress and good parameters and so far haven't had a reinfestation (in over a year), even with the new tang having an active outbreak. It is like a time bomb however, so I am tentatively planning on removing all the fish to hypo in the future. Not a fun prospect with a 240 gallon reef.
I have not seen any signs of marine ich in my own tank in about a year now, but I am 95% sure that it is in there, I don't really care much because I am able to keep my fish healthy and they seem to be able to keep the parasite at bay all by themselves.
This is pretty much the way I feel, but I really want an achilles tang! No way that will happen IMO with ich in my reef.
is there some sort of conspiracy going on by the makers of qt tanks and garlic makers, like the oil companys conspiring on the making of cars that dont use gas, am I alone here on this, is there some sort of taboo to use these new products, am I speaking blasphemy here?
Nah. There's no conspiracy here, just alot of experienced people that have tried everything and seen first hand what works and what doesn't. It's never blasphemy to ask any honest question, IMO.
It is possible that the products geared toward removing ich do work, but only in a minimal fashion. (Based on anecdotal evidence from other reefers). Perhaps they only kill/remove the parasite in one of it's forms. The problem with this scenario is that they could reinfect as soon as they enter their next life stage, and they are ready to find a host again. Another problem is that even if it works, you are still in the same position when you decide to add another fish, coral, invert, ect... you are likely to reintroduce crypto and be back at point A, deciding what to do about it. It's also possible that these products remove the visible ich granting the fish time to develop a partial immunity in which case it's still there and again, you're back at point A. I think this is what probably happens with folks who swear these products work, but just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
There really are alot of "snake oil" type products out there in this hobby, making claims that can't be proven or are even outright lies.
Kill your fish because you didn't follow the advice of a million reefers collected at ReefCentral.
