Joke
New member
Which happens alot in beginner tanks
where does ich come from?
- Thread starter johnfallon135
- Start date
Spar
New member
see it all the time where someone takes the 'advice' of some kid in a LFS and adds in a "QT'ed fish" or "immune fish" straight out of their water system. Boom, Ich is back.
Another big one is adding in non-fish that aren't isolated long enough first. Plenty of people say that must have been the source of a re-infestation.
Are you referring to live rock and corals?
Spar
New member
yes among anything else 'wet', such as macro algae, shrimp, etc.
i'd say live rock is the most ripe for bringing in a cyst hitchhiker though. corals on the boney exposured parts too perhaps.
Ich is an animal. It is an independent animal for most of its life cycle. It's like a mosquito: it needs blood/fishy substance as part of its life cycle---you don't go around with mosquitos popping out of you. You aren't born that way. You attract them when you sleep in swamps. Fishes' nighttime sleeping spots become infested in a very limited tank and the little beasts reproduce in the sandbed after dropping off a fishy meal source. Think mosquitoes. Not every tank has them. Not every fish has them.
Alexraptor
New member
Eh, far from all untreated and wild caught fish actually have ich.
In the decade I have been in the hobby, only "once" have I ever run across a fish that has actually been carrying ich.
That said, having no quarantine procedure is always Russian Roulette to a degree.
johnfallon135
New member
so do you isolate your corals and inverts for 72 days?
seamonster124
New member
where does ich come from?
What about until u add anything from another tank or ocean? Can ich reside on a drag feom the store if that tank has fish with ich?
What about until u add anything from another tank or ocean? Can ich reside on a drag feom the store if that tank has fish with ich?
Last edited:
ThRoewer
New member
It is usually enough if one infected fish is collected and housed with all the others for a couple of days until being shipped out. Most exporters just have large interconnected holding tanks and just one sick fish is enough to infect the system and any further fish handled through it.
The next place where diseases are proliferated are the wholesalers. The better ones usually run their systems with some degree of medication or other means of disease control (for example industrial grade UV sterilizers) but that usually just stops full outbreaks and tank to tank spreading.
But in general, the worst offenders are the local fish stores that house all fish together, sometimes even with inverts that can carry cysts on their shells or base rocks.
Also that are fish not showing any symptoms doesn't mean they are clean. They may very well carry an infection but are strong enough to keep it contained. If all fish in a system are strong enough to keep ich under wrap it may actually fade into extinction, but betting on that carries the same odds as Russian roulette.
Do you collect fish directly? I see fish with ich in every lfs, every visit.
Joke
New member
Yeah true when they have just been cuaght, also ich is not much of a problem in the ocean even if they do get it they dont even have to fight for their life, nearly all fish in the ocean will win the fight.
Spar
New member
correct. and yes I do that.
i am starting my tank over right now and plan to just keep my tank fishless for a long while so that I can use my DT as a QT for corals and inverts. will be a heck of a lot easier than going at it in my 20g QT.
Similar threads
