Explain this to me please...why is there still ICH?

Well think how easily ICH would spread in a large tank population. I mean there are hosts galore for the little parasites.

I bet fish hacheries for aquarium fish are pretty nasty and not as clean or concerned about the fishes well being, this would lead to higher stress in the fish and lower immune systems.

You must also account for wild type fish that are caught and bred. New source of ICH.

Additionally without ICH how could anyone sell all that ICH medicine...that crap is expensive.

I have noticed some LFS really take the time with new shipments to quarentine the tank and I've rarely had ich from trusted sources. It's always when I break down and buy some **** fish from petsmart that my tank gets ich.
 
rrkss said:
Not neccessarily true. View it like this. In your home aquarium, finding a fish to feed on would be the same as a person living in New York heading from his bedroom to his refridgerator and getting a bite to eat. This gives a high level of success. In a breeder tank, it would be the same as that same New York person having to walk to Kansas to find food. The ich might not be lucky enough to bump into the fish and die.
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I'm not believing this yet. If stocking level can be equated to fish-per-cubic-foot, then two tanks with relatively the same stocking levels will have the same relative amounts of living hosts for the ICH parasite free-swimmers. It wouldn't matter if you had 3 goldfish in a 55 gallon tank or 60 goldfish in a 1100 gallon tank or 300 goldfish in a 5500 gallon tank. The ICH could take over just as fast in each case.
 
Yeah I know there's no solution except what you recommend...I'm just trying to figure out exactly why it doesn't wipe out the breeders. Maybe when things get a bit shady there they throw in a couple pounds of salt until it backs off a little. I don't know.

I can also see why a person with a very large, expensive tank stocked with high-dollar fish would only buy from a trusted fish auction or U.S. small breeder, despite the cost.
 
From what I've heard, not many people bother quarantining new acquistions. Ick also goes through several life stages, only one of which is noticable on the fish. In one of it's other stages, it settles on things in the tank--like plants and snails and gravel and gets into the filter and all that--and not all stages of ick are susceptible to the same treatment. And all it takes is a wild-caught feeder fish thrown into a tank of feeder fish, then feeder fish get thrown into the fish tank (to feed a fish) and the whole ick thing goes round again. Many fish keepers do not realize ick has stages so their fish keep getting reinfected each time the ick cycles. Plants will carry in ick too. Etc. If you are real careful and do all that is always recommended, you probably won't have an ick breakout to have to deal with.
 
Dave's ICH article was so completely informative that when I read it I lost all fear and mystery about the parasite.

However I now rightly REspect it and EXpect to get it from every LFS tank whether I see it on the fish or not.

Thank you again Dave for helping me (and probably many others) to completely understand what ICH is and how to get rid of it.
 
In most cases with our Hobby, IT comes down to Rapid movement of animals from one spot to another. Breeders in many cases I'm sure would be ich free, Transport vessels, holding areas, etc. Would not be. There are still a lot of wild caught fish in the hobby as well which will bring in additional infections to replenish any drop in captive bred ich. All totaled up, ich will remain in the hobby. IF you think about the reality, very few LFS employees including managers really understand ich and it's life cycle. People who don't understand the parasite do not know how to recognize, treat, and prevent it. And as fish are moved, they are constantly spreading the parasite all over the hobby.

LFS's in many cases bring new fush in and dump them right in the tank that had last weeks supply. If there is one fish left, the new batch will get ich if it was there.

With Breeders Especially the larger ones, Fish are not often watched closely, given the immune response with most fish, and the subtleness of many symptoms, it can go unnoticed very easily. Tank size has as much to do as volume. ICH has no eyespot, so essentially it swims randomly and hopes to collide with a fish, The further it may have to swim the less it's chances, the more fish in the tank, the less it can take over one fish in particluar. breeding tanks aften undergo large volume daily water changes which will further reduce the quantity of ich in a tank, so it remains in small numbers very well hidden, similar to how it lives in the wild. It does not manifest itself heavily until the fish are put in an LFS tank and allowed to remain there for a while.

Add in the fact that most fish stores follow the bottle directions and stop treament shortly after the spots fall off, Ich is not always killed at the LFS even when they think it is.

A lot of the ich research I have found was from the Catfish farming idustry, where ich does have devastating effects on heavly stocked Channel cat ponds. But these fish are not cared for and moved in the manner that breeders care for and move around their fish. Additionally, I imagine breeders do have some issue, but I seriously doubt they are going to let too many people know. In all seriousness, the last thing a breeder wants any customer to know is that they have an ich outbreak.

To put it bluntly, that old-wives tale is pure BS. ICH is a living parasite that can easily be completely removed from an aquarium. Do some research before spreading misinformation.
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And just for the record I will Third this comment. For more information try the ich article

Dave
 
mvigor said:
Yeah I know there's no solution except what you recommend...I'm just trying to figure out exactly why it doesn't wipe out the breeders. Maybe when things get a bit shady there they throw in a couple pounds of salt until it backs off a little. I don't know.

I can also see why a person with a very large, expensive tank stocked with high-dollar fish would only buy from a trusted fish auction or U.S. small breeder, despite the cost.
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Hrm, just to clarify -- my comment on qt and salt were directed towards the post made by TorturedSOUL. I should have quoted him :)

Most LFS and online fish places buy their fish from fish farms in Florida. These fish are raised in huge vats -- and sometimes ponds -- outdoors:

http://www.floridafins.com/
http://www.tropicalfishmiami.com/shop/
http://mikejacobs.50megs.com/AFewFloridaFishFarmFacts.html
http://www.goliadfarms.com/index.html

I don't think many people realize the magnitude of the fish farm industry in Florida.

It wouldn't suprise me if many of these places have ich -- and other diseases -- in their tanks and ponds. Who's to stop them from shipping sick or potentionally sick, fish?

Roan
 
mvigor said:
To put it bluntly, that old-wives tale is pure BS. ICH is a living parasite that can easily be completely removed from an aquarium. Do some research before spreading misinformation.
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I know it is a parasite, that is why I said it is LIKE the common cold. And the fact is I did my reasearch. And fish can be latent carriers for the parasite. So that old wifes tale isn't BS. You never know what fish is carrying the parasite because only the free swimming form of it can be killed. So perhaps you should do your own research before being blunt about anything.

And here are some sites for your research.

http://www.fishdoc.co.uk/disease/whitespot.htm

http://www.nunnie.com/ick.html

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art3529.asp

http://aquanic.org/publicat/usda_rac/efs/srac/476fs.pdf

So do some reading before you spout off anything else on the matter. If you want more I will surly give you some.
 
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msouth468 said:
I know it is a parasite, that is why I said it is LIKE the common cold. And the fact is I did my reasearch. And fish can be latent carriers for the parasite. So that old wifes tale isn't BS.
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ICH lives its life in stages. It can't control when it changes from one form to another. Time and water temperature control it's growth and transformation. ICH can't "hide out" on a fish. It CAN be in a low-visibility place, like the gills, during it's "white spot" phase, true, but that isn't hiding.

Fish can't be called carriers of ICH, that implies that they can never be cured. They either have ICH or they have no ICH. They can ALL be cured.

msouth468 said:
You never know what fish is carrying the parasite because only the free swimming form of it can be killed. So perhaps you should do your own research before being blunt about anything.
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You're definintely partly right here. With NEW ACQUISITIONS, new fish brought home from an unknown prior chain of custody, you definitely can't tell by looking if the fish is carrying one or more ICH parasites. They might not be visible. So you quarantine them in their own 10 gallon tank, treat them as though they do have ICH with salt and heat. Then, after 2 or 3 weeks, longer just to be careful, you know with 100% absolute certainty that your new fish is completely ICH free, never to have it again.

That's how it works.


Any fish carrying ICH without symptoms, especially in a very lightly stocked coldwater tank where the ratio of water to fish is high and the life cycle of the parasite takes weeks instead of days, will APPEAR to be some kind of "carrier" of the disease but is, in fact, simply still infested with ICH. THIS is the "latent phase" that Shawn Prescott's article talks about. The other sources quote him.
 
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