Well as I said the glucans that come from yeast are the best so it might be more accurate to say bread versus garlic :razz:

How about garlic bread than!

Albert - funny that the shorthand for lipopolysaccharides is LPS, was that an intentional pun? :mrgreen:

Anyway, I guess the cure for my problems is to feed garlic bread to my fish or to use No Sick Fish?

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I would say if you are patient try the garlic, but if you want it gone typically in less then 7 days use No Sick Fish. I tryed the garlic method when I put in my sohal and my kole was picking on it so it got ick. Almost 2 weeks later it still had the ick (so due to my lack of patience), so I went out and bought some more NSF Ick remover and 3 days later it was all cleared up and the sohal has not shown any specks since then.

Click here for a good read about marine ick

Dispells some of the common myths IMO.

Who is the author of this?

Not really sure - I had this as a bookmark from years ago. Seems as though the homepage associated with the site no longer relates to reefs.

Going out on a limb here...

Ich is a stress related disease usually if there is no stress the Ich is not infective (actively) which is why often when you introduce a newcomer to the tanke the newbie gets it, while the rest do not.

The stress causes here is obvious. One the fish get settled down from dosin then put them back in the tank. It takes 5 days for ich to fully go though it's life cycle. So, if there was no futher fish in the tank that were ill (with ich) It should be cycled throug for the most part.

But your fish back in the main tank. But before you do, check your nitrates and pH to see if things are screwed up.

NAS - The parameters are all good but I'm not about to put any of my fish back into my reef. It's just not worth it until I understand basics of the bio-science behind it all.

Treating already infected fish aside (not the main issue as the fish are healthy & are getting over it) these following points reflect my original question about how long it takes a fish-less reef tank to 'cycle' through it's ich infestation.

4. Cycle can be completed in less than 7 days, but usually within 24 days BUT can go as long as 72 days. Literature usually quotes ‘average’ number of days. 72 days is rare; 60 days usually encompasses more than 99.9% of the observations and research.

14. INTERESTING FIND: If no new MI is introduce into an infected aquarium, the MI already there continues to cycle through multiple generations until about 10 to 11 months when the MI has ‘worn itself out’ and becomes less infective. A tank can be free of an MI infestation if it is never exposed to new MI parasites for over 11 months.


Do I wait 7 days? 60 days? 11 months???

This point, under Treatments, is what I referring to in letting the tank go fallow.

10. Let aquarium go fishless (without any foreign saltwater additions (e.g., water from LFS system, water from another tank or system -- use only distilled or RO/DI for evaporation and freshly made, uncontaminated salt water for water changes), without contamination from infected tanks, live rock additions, etc.) for at least 8 weeks and the tank will be free of MI. This 'fallow period' has over a 99.9% chance of success.

Points 14 & 10 above seem to contradict each other, much like other reports & papers I've seen in researching Ich.

Regards No Sick Fish reef safe Ick Treatment...

6. No known ‘reef-safe’ remedies work consistently. Many aquarists think a particular remedy works when in fact the fish acquire an immunity or defense against the parasite. It’s easy for any manufacturer to have an independent study done on the effectiveness of the ‘reef-safe’ remedy but they don’t because. . .

3. It goes away with a ‘reef-safe’ remedy. Untrue. This is one of the biggest and most 'dangerous' of the misrepresentations in the hobby. The aquarist thinks everything is okay when it isn't. What usually has happened is that the parasite has killed the fish it will kill and the rest have developed a resistance or immunity. The parasite is still in the aquarium, possibly infecting the gills of the fish where it can’t be seen.

So where does that leave me?

Back to square one. Leaving my reef tank fishless & question marks over how long to do it for.

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My understanding of the two referenced points:

For point # 14, An existing tank with fish (hosts) will be ich free after about 11 months as long as no new strains of ich are introduced (ie. new fish, corals or outside sources of SW) This is believed to occur through a mutation of the parasite itself, it basically becomes so "inbred" it can no longer survive.

Point #10 refers to a fallow tank with no fish (no hosts for the ich parasite), which after around 8 weeks without a host the parasite can no longer survive.

Since my display tank has ich already (all the fish came through fine) and I don't want to quarantine them all of them for 2 months, I hope to go through 11 months without new additions to "cure" the ich . I won't be adding any fish but there are still some corals and inverts I would like to add so the clock hasn't started yet.