Would you remove an ich prone fish?

[musicsmaker]

I've been pondering. Right now in a 20 long tank I have a purple firefish, yellow watchman, and a sharknose goby. The only fish that has any ich on it is the sharknose, and he is covered. He acts unaware, wagging at me and eating flake food voraciously.

My question is this: Since he is covered in spots and each one can form 100's of new parasites, wouldn't the increased parasite load be irritating the other fish? Maybe he needs to go.

 

[Deinonych]

All fish in the tank have been exposed, even if they are not currently showing symptoms. Removing the goby will not remove the infection. All fish will need to be treated. Recommend reading the stickies at the top of this forum for treatment options.

 

[ThRoewer]

The other fish have likely developed enough immunity to your Ich strain that they can handle it. If you don't plan to add any new fish you may just remove the sick fish, treat it with the method of your choice and put him back after a month and hope his immune system has learned to fight it.

But the parasite is very likely still in the system, so any new fish that hasn't been expose to this strain before will get symptomatic, if not severely infected.
Also, if anything goes wrong and the fish's immune systems get compromised you could have a flare up. That could be just a few spots to a tank wipe out.

The above worked for my percula and fridmani pairs, but honestly, I wouldn't recommend it, especially if you want to add more fish.
I only did it because I didn't have much other choice at the time and because this tank is only temporary. They all will be cleaned up before going into the new permanent tank.

 

[musicsmaker]

I know it would still be present, but I'm thinking like this:

If all the fish have good immunity built up, then only once in a while will a parasite sucessfully attach and make it to the reproduction phase.

But, if one is getting covered with them and they all make it through to the reproduction phase, instead of 100's of free swimming parasites in the water at any given time, there could be 10's of thousands. Imagine getting bitten by a mosquito every few minutes verses every few seconds. I'm kinda picturing that. So it's not the fact that ich is there, it's more a matter of HOW MUCH?

Eventually I do plan to treat all the fish with hypo, but that could be another month or so.