wow..that one is stupid, don't ever go there again. Ich won't go dormant, this is temperature dependant if the water is too cold (that would kill your fish). At normal temperature the ich kill will not go dormant and die there...wow, really stupid thing to say. Even if a cyst go dormant for many weeks, it will not die, it will eventualy hatch.
The more you remove the more you will control the parasites. Do you have coral and invertabrates? you would slowly, over the course of one week, lower the salinity if you don't have any coral. That kill everything though..pods and all dusters, shrimp, crabs, seastars, everything that is not fish. So this is not something possible in a reef tank, only in quarantine tank.
Those miracle cure does nothing. Generaly the ich goes away on its own. You can try soaking the hippo food in garlic and leave it in peace for a while to help reduce the stress. It may not even be ich? maybe he hit himself on the rock and got some little pimples? that hapened to my hippo when he dashed on a motipora and got a few pieces of coral incrusted in his skin for a few days.
Syphoning the sand might help, but if you further stress your tang it might get worse if it is ich and you will have to catch it and treat it. So best to not stress it too much and watch for a few days.
For anything and everything you put in the tank should be quarantined. Coral as well as shrimp. Marine velvet and ich can have cyst attached to frags or a shrimp and then be transfered in your aquarium.
I always quarantine my corals and animals for 6 weeks before I put them in my main tank. Without a host fish those 2 parasites will perish as they cannot go dormant at a normal temperature and will eventualy hatch and starve to death.
This is the only way to make sure your tank is 100% free of parasites.
The good news is that if it is ich in your tank and the fish fight it off, then after about 10 generation the ich strain will exhaust itself and die off. That is if no new strain of ich is intruduced. At least that's what I read a few times. Not sure if it is true but juging how often we see people having ich and then never again, it is possibly true.
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Originally Posted by pyke
while another store told me not to clean the tank for fear of stiring up the reproducting ich, and just allow them to stay dorment and not attach to any fish so they can die off.
Should I be Cleaning the tanks? should I be doing large frequent water changes? should I look at trying a Miracle cure? any suggestions would be appreciated?
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