[Myanth]

My theory is .... ich sucks.

Thanks for the info though. I have five cleaners in the tank and they are still working madly. The angel and the tang have very little on them at all. The dragon is never very far from a cleaner, and when one gets full he finds another. He is looking better. The four stripes are seeing the cleaners as well and have stopped scratching against the rocks.

I have read a fair amount on this ... stuff and it seems to me it is a parasite. It breeds in the substrate, hatches and moves to light as Lee said, finds a host fish, lives on the host for one to three days and drops off at night to continue the life cycle.

So here's my theory.

If one part of this life chain is broken completely, the species would cease to exist. In my 10 gallon I had two clowns with ich and got two cleaners. They were together daily for the first two months. No sign of ich after the first week. Then the cleaners stopped seeing the fish very much at all and became more interested in the food I was feeding. So much so that when I came by the tank they would walk on the surface (underneath) and stick their claws up out of the water. That was a year and a half ago. I lost those cleaners about eight months ago and did not have a problem with ich at all. All of the inhabitants moved over to my 90 in early January. I did not have any ich problems until Teusday of this week past, two days after adding about twenty pounds of well cured live rock, coral beauty, small clown, yellow goby, some crushed coral to my sump, and an anemone. (It was a good trip to Calgary) This past Thursday I introduced the cleaners.

Hopefully they will remove all of the parasite at it's adult stage when it requires a host fish, thereby preventing the breeding of the parasite. And I know what you're thinking. It only takes one adult to make it past the cleaners to breed a ton more. I have read many places that a single adult can only make 20-200 cysts that could become new parasites. Therefor... I know this will not be a quick fix. But over time, maintaining the population I have now, which was my goal all along, the cleaners must impact the population.

Of course, that being said, If I see a decline in the health of my fish, I would immediatly remove them for treatment and I will have that option available. As of right now, they are all looking much, much better, and I will keep you informed.

Mike