Marine Biologist generally do not have the answer to this...My older brother is a marine biologist and would know less about ich than we do most likely. Its not something they deal with. I just meant the one who gave the info was one and is well respected. It was not his study though.

Like I said before, Im not going to waste my time looking. If it is important to you go ahead and look. I don't keep links. I have seen the study and IMO it was very well controlled and conducted. I offered the advice and no one wants to believe it (fair enough and I understand...I mean it would not be a good news), to be honest, I don't care. I though it would be nice to share but I actually wish I had just been quiet about it...no I don't have the links/facts but I know what I saw and thought it was good for other to know. When I heard ich can live longer without a host it answered a lot of questions I had and made a lot of sense. I hear too many people QTing for 6-8 weeks and still having ich in the tank. I hypo'd my poor fish for 8 weeks at 1.008 and then kept them in QT for another 3 weeks to make sure the ich was gone. Put them back in the display and added nothing new. Two weeks later they had ich again. You tell me where it came from?!? Two possibilities and both are very possible. Either this strain of ich was able to adjust and live in hypo (very possible) or it lived without a host for 11 weeks in my tank. I went looking for answers on RC and found that study where ich had lived almost 3 months without a host. Made total sense at that point. Not all strains of ich can do this and there are quite a few.

My problem with most of the advice given on all these ich websites/pages like the link above is that its all based on a few studies done in the 90's with little known about the parasite and ONE species of fish. You guys are all over me for proof and that is fair but maybe go ahead and actually look at how that study was conducted. Look at which strain of ich was used and how. It was not the best study to be honest and yet all kind of literature is based on it.

I already did give one link showing how ich has adapted and evolved. Why would it not be evolving? No different from any other parasite...they adapt very well.

Wasn't here for an argument though so I am going to stay away from this...

I don't know if this is the article you were talking about. There is some good info about ICH by someone that has done some research on it.They do say that ICH can survive a long time...months..
I usually quarantine..unless I know the fish is healthy and eating.For me..using a good sized (25 gal) quarantine tank with live rock helps the fish get adjusted to your feeding schedule and foods...as well as seeing if they have any disease.I don't put any sand in. I can remove the rock for treatment if necessary.
If the fish is a finicky eater...it can help you find out what it will eat..you can observe it better and your other fish don't get all the food.



http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...ths-facts.html

Along the same lines, yes but not the same one. This one says up to 72 days. The journal I read had ich surviving even longer. I think this is a decent site/page hitting some of the major points of the "ich myths" though. Thanks.

Yes QT is very good still. I have never argued its not :) I have a new fish in QT right now. I still do it but not for ich. I am looking for other things. My fish are all treated with Prazi Pro for a week at minimum.

This was not about QTing in general, just about QTing for ich.

double post...

To me, that's enough to think the article GreenSpottedPuffer found could be right. Maybe not totally right but certainly not totally wrong.
There is lot we don't know so we must not reject a theory just because most say something else (especially when we see exemples like GreenSpottedPuffer showed us above.)


That's right for many things. Just take the exemple of fertilizers in freshwater planted tank. Most paper about this are old and not good at all. Most were based on the bellive that po4 was the reason we get algae in planted aquaria. We now know there is nothing as wrong but many still realy on that. When we say this is wrong, they reffer to 100s of article to prove this is right (all from the 80's and 90's).

hmmm so Erick bornman and Ron Schmek, don't know anything about Ich, man that makes me question there knowledge on corals and inveterate now:mrgreen: just joking.. they are two of the articles I have read.

I am not saying there isn't a variation out there that doesn't live longer, there could be as I said before I hear some one mention one that stays in the cyst stage for up to 3 months, but they are the exception not the norm, or we would be able to find articles on the easy. I know a lot of marine biologist don't know anything about somethings, but generally if the publish a paper it is something they have researched as published papers are subject to peer reviews and they are mad up of peers in the field the paper is on.

heck for all we know people could be calling a fungal infection Ich.

but at any rate depending on the quarantine tank, one of the common recommendations I read last night was to skip it as it can cause more stress and weaken the fishes ability to fight it off themselves.

Also remember if you do quarantine, do one purchase, when you put the fish into the display empty and bleach the quarantine tank so there aren't any cysts left in there, there is a chance that if you just empty and wipe out the tank, put new water in it to age and 3 weeks later you put a new fish in for quarantine then the cysts could hatch and infect your new fish and so one and so one which could cause a reoccurring infection in the tank also.

Steve

LOL...you know what I mean about the marine biologists though. A majority do not ever come in contact with ich because a majority do not specialize in home aquaria and there is not an ich problem in the ocean. I asked my brother once who out of his colleagues and friends I can ask about marine ich because they are all biologists like him and he couldn't name one. Anyways thats not the point and the two names you dropped obviously know their stuff :)

I was careful to try to say ich "CAN" survive much longer than previously thought, not that it will. I have a pretty good feeling the ich I had/have is not the same as most strains I have been able to rid in the past. It was just something to bring up as a warning that while an ich free tank is indeed possible, there is not ever going to be a surefire way to obtain that. There are just too may variables. There are ways to give yourself a good chance of having an ich free tank though and if people believe thats the way to go, I think they should. I just do not. I know what article you read about QT being more stressful than good on many fish and the opinion was to skip it...I am starting to agree more and more with this. But I am certainly not the kind of person to tell people what to do, thats just not me...I think people need to do what they feel is best after doing enough research.

My idea of this thread was to get as many opinions/ideas for successfully keeping fish, QT or not. I didn't want to make this big debate or struggle to disprove peoples advice or opinions (not that you are doing that). I just thought that new ideas/views would be nice to hear. I am very, very open at this point to new ideas. I have changed my QT practices DRASTICALLY from years past and am having much better success without much QT now. I have learned that fish really can fight off ich well if they are in pristine water conditions and feed very well and often. I also have much better equipment now which has allowed me to feed heavily three times a day while keeping nitrates pegged at 0. I can't do that for a month in QT. I feed every two days in QT and nitrates are more like 20. I feel fish have a better chance without the stress. JMO though ;)