your experience is probably because you never got rid of it. Then yes if you don't do something about it, it will always be present living in small number on the fish gill until a stress happen and bang.

I don't have ich, never have, in my main tank because I do a strict quarentine with hyposalinity to kill ick even if a fish look healthy I still do it. It's easy on the fish and a good practice to eliminate lots of parasites and ick.

ich is not the end of the world but it does kill lots of fish and when it grow out of control because of stress, it can wipe out a tank. I have seen it before.

Ich is like fleas on a cat and dog...yes they can live with it, miserably for some, more or less ok for others, but as much as our cats don't have to live with fleas, our fishes don't have to live with ich. At least mine don't.

Daniella I agree. My tank has always had Ich. Even healthy tanks have lower "incidences" of the disease break out.

..But I also still have the same first fish I bought when I got back into salt water aquariums 11 years ago....:wink::smile:

I didn't know about quarantining back then.

On another note, where did you buy your microscope that you have mentioned before?

daniella3d is correct, i've had several battles with ich in an established q tank that i use mainly to quaratine corals, made the mistake of quarantining a fish with some corals, the fish had ich, and now i quarantine my fish in a bare 5 gal hospital tank, the corals remained in the q tank for 45 days, no ich transfered to the display.

I'm pretty sure it was clownfish disease, which has a shorter life cycle than ich, so 8 weeks should be safe.

Thank you for all your help everyone!

I bought my microscope from a nature store around Montreal (Lire la Nature). It was around 200$ or a bit less if I remember. It's only a 400x microscope but it is very cool to see all the microscopic world. Especialy usefull to ID pest algae like dinoflagellates and cyano.