Your metaphor indicated that ich was like venomous snakes that a fish/person could avoid unless put into a aquarium/bathroom

Anyhooo, I have a bottle of garlic extract sitting here if you want to dose his food Marie, it worked on my powder brown with no I'll effects to the reef, did make for some funky smelling skimmate tho, welcome to it if you want.

You're losing me here. The above is correct, but not relevant to the intelligence thingy.
Ich in the wild is less likely to come into contact with a fish. When it does, the fish DOES have a protective slime coat that can "help" avoid infestation by that single ich bug, although it's not a sure fire thing. However, in a closed environment, a healthy fish is much more likely to come into contact once your bucket of ich is introduced, and while it's slime coat may assist in warding off the initial attacks, the attacks themselves may cause a cumulative build in stress that lessens the fishes chances of avoiding infestation.
Ergo, a healthy non stressed fish in an aquarium that has an over population of ich is highly at risk of contracting ich. Mostly I made this up, but it just sounds so damn good :)
However, you please believe whatever you like, and don't let me try to convince you you're wrong, just because you made stuff up. It sounds all pretty good too, you know, for made up stuff. :razz:

hint taken, I'm done. Yes, Marie, I've had good success with garlic.

I prefer to use fresh garlic, there are some helpful chemicals in garlic that degrade rapidly in fresh air so to get the most out of it I crush fresh everytime......It really does make my house smell like an Italian restaurant

This still doesn't explain why in a small confined place ich is only attacking 1 fish. And my made up theory still explains this better than yours. I'm done too, you can pm me when you come up with a better theory.

Yes, the compound is Allicin; I smash the fresh cloves right onto the sheet of nori (I've usually had to feed tangs).

That's it, I always forget how to spell it. Keep thinking there is an s in there for some reason so I find it easier to just call it a chemical :redface:

A parasite is a living organism. They need a host to feed off of in order to replicate.

A virus is not considered to be living therefore it does not need its host for "food". Rather it needs a specific host cell to replicate. It attacks the cell itself. Both Lytic and Lysogenic Viruses destroy the host cells in order to reproduce.

Parasites are more easily dealt with via medication if the parasite type is known. There are very few medications for viruses. Virus defense is generally vaccines which usually contain the dead virus' protein coat (immune system responds to this) creating antibodies to deal with that specific virus. Once your immune system creates these antibodies, it can fight off future infection before it makes you sick.

The above method of vaccination can work for parasites but it is not used much anymore. In the case of ich, there is even a theory (I stress theory) that fish can become "immune" to ich after fighting it off. I'd believe this more if we were talking a virus but to some degree it may be true. "From my experience" does not make something fact, just one observation in an uncontrolled environment.

Bottom line, of course a stressed fish is more likely to have a compromised immune system in which viruses, bacteria and parasites will be more successful in attacking and making your fish sick but saying a "healthy" non stressed fish will not get a parasite even if a lot of the parasite is introduced to a closed system is absurd. I'd like to know how the stress level of these fish is being measured anyways. I doubt many fish in our aquariums are NOT stressed to some degree, it's actually quite amazing how well they can adapt and survive considering what they went through and continue to go through in our aquariums.

Anyway, now I'm contributing to this thread getting off track.

Sorry to hear about this Marie. One of my favorite fish over the years on Canreef...

wow...can't beleive I am reading this!

In the ocean the ick kyst are getting dispersed all over the currents and rarely they will be able to remain on a fish for very long because they get wiped away as soon as they detatch from the fish so not large scale infection can take place. However in the aquarium where the fish are so confined it is very easy for the ick to find the same fish over and over again until that poor fish is covered.

So yeah...if you dumped a bucket full of ick into a tank you would infect all of the fish in there. Has nothing to do with healthy or not healthy fish...it is a parasite and it will parasite.

Also you say you saw fish survive ick without treatment...fine....except have you ever seen fish survive marine velvet without treatment? now they are both parasites and the only reason that some fish manage to fight off ick is that it is not as nasty parasites. It's not only due to the fish fighting it off, it also has to do with the fact that ick is not such a deadly parasite as some others. If your theory about healthy fish fighting off disease would be true, then quite a bit of fish would survive velvet infestation, but that's simply not true. I guess that according to your theory, it means that a lot of fish are not heatly or they would not need medication to fight off marine velvet.