What's the longest anyone has seen a visible ich spot stay on a fish? Let me give a little background to this question. I was qt-ing some long-fin rosy barbs. I planned to qt them for 3 weeks or even more, but to make a long story short I pro-actively over-medicated and harmed my biological filter. The ammonia started to rise and I managed it for a few days with water changes, but it started to get out of hand. By that time, the barbs had been in qt for 2 weeks, and looking fine, so I went ahead and put them in my 55 community tank, rather than expose them to more water quality issues. The thing is, these barbs have very iridescent tails, and 2 barbs have one white-looking spot each on them, one on a tail and one on a fin. I've had the barbs for a total of 24 days, and I noted those 2 white spots at least 19 days ago. The spots were probably there when I got them. Of course when I first noticed them I thought it was ich, but when the spots stayed there for so long, I began to think they were just part of the barbs' glittery coloration. Because the spots do look whiter when the light catches them and duller when in the shade--not really the "grain of salt" look of ich. And, no other fish, including the other barbs and the clown loaches who've lived with them for over a week now, are showing any symptoms of ich--no spots, no flashing. But then I read, just last night, an article at the Novalek/Kordon website, saying that some strains of ich can remain in the visible white spot stage for up to 35 days! Has anyone ever heard of this? My heart really skipped a beat when I read that, because I thought, what if those 2 spots are actually long-lasting ich spots? But, even if that were so, I feel like it would be unlikely to have only one generation of ich on my barbs--that is, I feel like there would have been some invisible ich in their gills, too, which would have hatched and spread by now and become visible, after 24 days. Like I said, I've seen those same 2 spots for at least 19 days, and I'd really like to be assured that it is very unlikely to be ich, because I have a new clown loach in qt who wants to move into the community tank soon--and I really don't want to think that those 2 little glittery barbs have been harboring little ich time bombs. Any opinions on this?