Thoughts on ich
- Thread starter Paul B
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Paul B
Premium Member
No, we know, they have it nailed down to the exact number of minutes. But like many things in this hobby, we are wrong. It depends on temperature, salinity, and a number of other things that only the parasite knows, that is why sometimes, even with strict quarantine, some tanks still get infected. I want to know why.
Khemul
New member
It also depends on the strain/variant/whatever you want to call it. All Ich isn't the same. Different strains have different resistances, different cycle times, etc.
It's why hypo has fallen a little as a preferred treatment. There seems to be strains that can survive hypo. Some claim to have had strains that have survived copper. The other tricky thing is we aren't lab settings, so many unknown variables come into play, especially user error.
It's why hypo has fallen a little as a preferred treatment. There seems to be strains that can survive hypo. Some claim to have had strains that have survived copper. The other tricky thing is we aren't lab settings, so many unknown variables come into play, especially user error.
Breeding mode? Blue pills? Rhino horn?
So we really DONT know how long ich lasts in our tank without fish... just educated guesses really
More than that plenty of experiments. Tons of research around this parasite is out there just google up Crptocaryon irritans you'll find plenty.
FWIW, I prefer the tank transfer method fo all new specimens for acclimation and qt.
So we really DONT know how long ich lasts in our tank without fish... just educated guesses really
More than that plenty of experiments. Tons of research around this parasite is out there just google up Crptocaryon irritans you'll find plenty.
FWIW, I prefer the tank transfer method fo all new specimens for acclimation and qt.
RAJOD
Member
TMZ please stop twisting this into some kind of argument. It was a simply analogy and you go off on this tangent if you say black I'll say white.
I know the life cycle of both. Ich does not leave the tank just as borellia does not magically leave the body. They are both very difficult to get rid of.
The tank can have ich and seem healthy, a person can have borellia and seem healthy. Its an analogy do you understand?
Paul, I have seen you make this point a number of times, but what exactly do you mean by it? Apologize if you have explained this elsewhere, but is it about nutrition, water quality, etc., or something else?
It is you who are twisting. I know what an analogy is and I know one that is not apt. I asked you why you thought lyme disease was like ich. Thought you had a reason for saying so I might learn form. You said because it's carried in the body of a seemingly healthy fish like the bacteria is in the body of a human. But it's not and I explained that,the bacteria doesn't leave after a few days ;the ich does . How is that" twisting"? Now you say this bacteria and ich are both hard to remove ;well not from the fish ;it leaves on its own and will simply starves in a tank without fish.
It's easy to get ich out of tank. Just take away the fish and the ich in the tank will die.
A bacterium and a protozoan with a 3 stage lifecycle are fundamentally different. The analogy is not apt and misleading;there are no similarities.
I'm not interested in arguing with you personally,since I don't see any gain from it . But I will state facts about this parasite in real world terms and challenge stuff that doesn't fit whenever it comes up without snarky commentary;I'll leave that junk to you .If that displeases you,so be it.
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Paul B
Premium Member
Wow, so do I.
I will try to make this as short as I can because these guys are having so much fun argueing if ich has a life or not. Personally think a paracite would have a boreing life.
But anyway Ca1ore, my methods are simple and I did not learn this on the internet, it came from decades of trying to kill paracites or trying to keep them out of my tank. It has nothing to do with water parameters but of course you can't keep the fish in damp sawdust, they need decent water and very little stress. We as aquarists use the word stress a lot but some of us get it wrong. Stress, besides not having bullies in the tank or having a to small tank has to do with anything that makes the fish "feel" it is not in the sea. Healthy fish spend their day building nests, looking for a mate and checking out nooks and crannies for food. They do not hide and they certainly don't have any marks or raised scales on them. They also eat a decent portion of their meal as live food. "Every day". I didn't make this up and if you dive, you will see that a good portion of a fishes diet is live fish or live plankton. Now I know if you read on the box of flakes or pellets it will have numerous vitamins and minerals listed. Those things are also listed on corn flakes but that is also not a good food for us.
Way back when we kept fresh water fish and we wanted to breed them the first thing any decent author said was to feed live food.
Live food such as worms get your fish into breeding condition in a couple of weeks all other things equal. Breeding fish IMO do not get ich. Why? I have no idea but I can only assume it is because of their immune system.
I know 97% of the people will not agree with me but they may not have my experience with this or they got all their experience on the internet which comes from rumors that have been tweeked thousands of times.
Before anyone disamisses my theories, they should feed live worms and fresh foods like clams for a month with no flakes, freeze dried or pellets and see if it works. No one out of all the people that disagree with me can say why my fish are not affected in any way from paracites. All you will hear is that my tank is a time bomb. In 7 years and one month my tank will be fifty years old. If I bought a time bomb like that I would want my money back.
There is certainly ich in my tank, it probably keeps the fishes immune system working properly just as it does in the sea. Quarantining fish stresses them as much as collection and shipping unless you can quarantine them in a large tank with decorations that make them feel like home. How many people say they bought a fish and it became covered in ich? How many people say they quarantined and let their tank fo fallow and everything was covered in ich?
I know all about what scientists say and I know the life cycle of the paracite and unfortunately there is obviousely something missing. If that were not true, there would not be more ich threads than anything else.
So I believe in getting the fishes immune system running the best it can by feeding the fish live food such as live white or black worms every day with some clam. Just like the people living in Mexico don't get dysintary but I do every time I go there. They built up an imunity just as fish can.
Many people would rather rely on rumors than fact or trying things themselves. How many people on here say an UG filter can't work? And there I am again with a tank older than any other with an antiquated system that can't possably work. But that is another rant. I hope your fish stay healthy whatever system you use. :beer:
(now you know why I gave up going on ich threads):hmm4:
Of course fish should be given homes where they can experience natural routines and conditions to the extent we can provide them including freedom from dense swarms of deadly parasites which develop in closed systems There would be fewer ich threads if useful protocols were followed and less time was spent trying to get fish and this deadly parasite to coexist in a tiny glass box or developing cryptic confusing analogies to argue positions without facts or data.
Though I am actually older than my friend Paul ,my tanks aren't. I didn't have enough time for this hobby until retiemnt about 11 years ago; it's been a near full time activity since then.
I keep over 50 fish with many breeding fish.Many of my fish are around 10 years old. My views are based on a rich trove of information . There is a lot of it out there since ich is important in aquaculture and fish farming and has been very well studied. It's not just research, though, but a lot of personal experience :some successful ,some not so much and some tragic that forms the advice I offer and the actions I take. In addition to my own fish ,rescue fish from local folks and local shops visit from time to time. I'd help more but limits on time and energy make that difficult.
There is no ich in my system. There was earlier on;breeding fish got it too, I followed poor advice and my own poor judgement by not using quarantine and then again by trying to fight it it with half measures like nutrition,garlic ,uv ,potions, and so on. Name it I probably tried it eithr at home or in my freinds lfs.. Many fish died along the way including some that were actively breeding, btw.. I hate this parasite and the carnage it causes. I will not make peace with it or accept it in my tanks . It will be denied entry.
It wasn't until I made a commitment to do the sma ll amount of work required for peaceful low stress quarantine and pre treatment that ich no longer threatens any thing in my tanks . It's a great feeling knowing I can introduce a new specimen to my system and the ich there won't kill it since there isn't any there. .
Though I am actually older than my friend Paul ,my tanks aren't. I didn't have enough time for this hobby until retiemnt about 11 years ago; it's been a near full time activity since then.
I keep over 50 fish with many breeding fish.Many of my fish are around 10 years old. My views are based on a rich trove of information . There is a lot of it out there since ich is important in aquaculture and fish farming and has been very well studied. It's not just research, though, but a lot of personal experience :some successful ,some not so much and some tragic that forms the advice I offer and the actions I take. In addition to my own fish ,rescue fish from local folks and local shops visit from time to time. I'd help more but limits on time and energy make that difficult.
There is no ich in my system. There was earlier on;breeding fish got it too, I followed poor advice and my own poor judgement by not using quarantine and then again by trying to fight it it with half measures like nutrition,garlic ,uv ,potions, and so on. Name it I probably tried it eithr at home or in my freinds lfs.. Many fish died along the way including some that were actively breeding, btw.. I hate this parasite and the carnage it causes. I will not make peace with it or accept it in my tanks . It will be denied entry.
It wasn't until I made a commitment to do the sma ll amount of work required for peaceful low stress quarantine and pre treatment that ich no longer threatens any thing in my tanks . It's a great feeling knowing I can introduce a new specimen to my system and the ich there won't kill it since there isn't any there. .
Paul B
Premium Member
TMZ, your older than Me. I am thrilled to find a Geezer older than I am. I am also happy about it. You old Coot :lol: Of course TMZ is my Old friend, and I mean that literally, we just disagree on a couple of things.
Some differences are you listened to someone's advice. I didn't have that opportunity as there was no one with saltwater fish then so unfortunately for the fish, I lost plenty of them. I did quarantine then and run copper continuously as that was the only way to keep fish. We just didn't know anything and had lousy tanks in regard to fish health.
In those days I also hated ich. I hated hair algae, flatworms, bryopsis, bubble algae, cyano, the war, the draft, black and white TV and people with hair. Actually, I had a lot of hair then :lmao:
But I no longer hate ich or algae. Ich, to me is a natural part of my tank. It is just another invertebrate that lives with me and in the sea as does algae. Over the years I have learned to stop fighting these natural things and use them to help my tank. Algae no longer grows on my coral but it does grow where I want it because to me, algae is good. Ich in itself is not good but the fact that it keeps annoying the immune system of my fish, like it does in the sea makes it my friend.:love2: Yes, I know you think I am nuts and you could stop laughing now. :lmao:
Ich is a non issue for me and my tank. If it were not for ich, I would still keep my fish in breeding condition just because that is the condition they should be in and I personally never had a spawning fish get ich. But apparently you did.
You said:
You also mentioned:
"Without facts or data". Lets discuss that. Scientific studies last for how long? A couple of months or until they run out of funds. We need scientific data of course but if I could show you a tank full of fish, some 20 years old "happily" as you say, living with dense swarms of deadly parasites and they are not only thriving, not scratching but spawning, would that not be a scientific test that would be better than a few scientists in a laboratory for a couple of months?
If and when they die, usually of old age I normally autopsy them and so far have never found a parasite on their gills. Why not? What happened to the swarm or deadly parasites? I recently lost a breeding pair of watchman gobies that spawned for me for 12 years. I even wrote a post about them. On autopsy (as a scientist would do) I could not find one parasite, not one. (yes I have a microscope)
Why is that? I bought a fish yesterday, a dragon faced pipefish, last week I bought a cardinal and in the last 35 years I am sure I added 100 or so fish, maybe more besides adding hundreds of gallons of seawater along with probably a gallon of mud. To collect amphipods I go to a muddy beach and swirl muddy rocks in a bucket of seawater, then I remove the crabs and dump this in my tank. I do that 3 or 4 times a year so I am pretty sure there are some parasites in there someplace. A few months ago I bought a copperband for $10.00 that was loaded with parasites. The fish recovered fine and I gave it away to a member on here. So I feel my tank is much better than a scientific study as there is no scientific study that would last over 40 years.
My extraordinary measures involve feeding live food like worms, that's about it. I don't use half measures, potions or rap music.
Now TMZ, my very old friend, as I said at the beginning of this thread. I am not advocating what I do. Everyone could make up their own mind and wave chicken bones over their tank or add cleaner shrimp (I love that one)
I am just asking, for discussion's sake, what is going on? If we knew exactly why my tank seems to be ich free, we would not have to quarantine and we could use those ich threads to talk about supermodels. :dance:
Some differences are you listened to someone's advice. I didn't have that opportunity as there was no one with saltwater fish then so unfortunately for the fish, I lost plenty of them. I did quarantine then and run copper continuously as that was the only way to keep fish. We just didn't know anything and had lousy tanks in regard to fish health.
In those days I also hated ich. I hated hair algae, flatworms, bryopsis, bubble algae, cyano, the war, the draft, black and white TV and people with hair. Actually, I had a lot of hair then :lmao:
But I no longer hate ich or algae. Ich, to me is a natural part of my tank. It is just another invertebrate that lives with me and in the sea as does algae. Over the years I have learned to stop fighting these natural things and use them to help my tank. Algae no longer grows on my coral but it does grow where I want it because to me, algae is good. Ich in itself is not good but the fact that it keeps annoying the immune system of my fish, like it does in the sea makes it my friend.:love2: Yes, I know you think I am nuts and you could stop laughing now. :lmao:
Ich is a non issue for me and my tank. If it were not for ich, I would still keep my fish in breeding condition just because that is the condition they should be in and I personally never had a spawning fish get ich. But apparently you did.
You said:
I agree with some of that that, garlic is useless as are potions or half measures (whatever that is) but I tend to think about this differently than most people.
You also mentioned:
"Without facts or data". Lets discuss that. Scientific studies last for how long? A couple of months or until they run out of funds. We need scientific data of course but if I could show you a tank full of fish, some 20 years old "happily" as you say, living with dense swarms of deadly parasites and they are not only thriving, not scratching but spawning, would that not be a scientific test that would be better than a few scientists in a laboratory for a couple of months?
If and when they die, usually of old age I normally autopsy them and so far have never found a parasite on their gills. Why not? What happened to the swarm or deadly parasites? I recently lost a breeding pair of watchman gobies that spawned for me for 12 years. I even wrote a post about them. On autopsy (as a scientist would do) I could not find one parasite, not one. (yes I have a microscope)
Why is that? I bought a fish yesterday, a dragon faced pipefish, last week I bought a cardinal and in the last 35 years I am sure I added 100 or so fish, maybe more besides adding hundreds of gallons of seawater along with probably a gallon of mud. To collect amphipods I go to a muddy beach and swirl muddy rocks in a bucket of seawater, then I remove the crabs and dump this in my tank. I do that 3 or 4 times a year so I am pretty sure there are some parasites in there someplace. A few months ago I bought a copperband for $10.00 that was loaded with parasites. The fish recovered fine and I gave it away to a member on here. So I feel my tank is much better than a scientific study as there is no scientific study that would last over 40 years.
My extraordinary measures involve feeding live food like worms, that's about it. I don't use half measures, potions or rap music.
Now TMZ, my very old friend, as I said at the beginning of this thread. I am not advocating what I do. Everyone could make up their own mind and wave chicken bones over their tank or add cleaner shrimp (I love that one)
I am just asking, for discussion's sake, what is going on? If we knew exactly why my tank seems to be ich free, we would not have to quarantine and we could use those ich threads to talk about supermodels. :dance:
DSPs
In Memoriam
Beautifuly said Paul! Where have u been when I needed you in all my ich arguments in the past!! I to have read all the articles and scientific data that people love to link in the ich discussions but just like you I agree that something is missing and all my advice is givin off experience not hear say from articles on the Internet. I know you don't like getting in the middle of ich discussions anymore but Thanks for taking the time to address this thread because it really needed it imo
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Interestingly a number of us that disagree with Paul and DSP on the subject of Ich, do so based upon years of experience and observation that just happen to agree with the science. Having had upwards of 1,000 or so actively breeding marine fish at any given time in my old lab, I can tell you the only thing needed for a healthy breeding condition fish to get a parasitic disease is for someone break quarantine protocol and disinfection procedure of nets and cleaning equipment. Saying a healthy fish can't get a parasite like ich is akin to saying a healthy dog can't get fleas.
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