Quote:
Originally Posted by smitas5
Would UV light help with this? I might be getting paranoid here, but I think. I saw some spots this evening.. Usually its more visible under moonlight.
I was thinking to get UV maybe permanently installed? What kind for 50G?
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I think UV sterilizers do more to make the people who buy them feel like they're doing something proactive about ich than actually combat the C. irritans parasite in any meaningful way.
Studies on the life cycle of marine ich have repeatedly shown that the parasite both detaches from the fish, and hatches from the substrate at night, with peak activity between 3 and 6am if I remember correctly. Once the theronts emerge from the tomont cyst, they swim about in a spiral pattern looking for a host, which they have to find within 18-24 hours or they die, though one study found they lost the ability to actually infect a new host even faster.
The reason I say this is because the parasite couldn't have evolved and survived over millions of years if it spent any significant amount of the time it's searching for a new host just blindly spinning about in the water column of something as big as the ocean. The fact that it both drops off the fish and hatches in the middle of the night is most likely an evolutionary strategy to minimize the distance between itself, a suitable substrate, and it's next host. The parasite drops off your fish when they're tucked away in their favourite night time hiding place, usually less than an inch or two from the substrate it encysts upon, in nooks and crannies filled with a gauntlet of suitable places for it to attach between it and your UV sterilizer. Since many/most fish (especially in aquariums) return to the same places to sleep every single night, the vast majority of infection will take place within seconds of the theronts hatching, long before any of that water will make its way to a UV sterilizer. I've seen people say they added a UV sterilizer and then ich went away, but that is the same kind of correlation fallacy that lead ancient hunter gatherers to believe that they could make it rain by doing a special dance.
Also it's absolutely possible to have an ich free tank. The people who say otherwise are usually just saying that to justify whatever ineffective or (more often) totally absent quarantine procedure they happen to subscribe to. A more accurate statement would add the caveat that it's impossible to have or maintain an ich free tank when you don't prophylactically quarantine all fish using a method that's known to eliminate C. irritans from the beginning, or appropriately treat and fallow a tank once infection does occur. C. irritans is a discrete organism with a specific life cycle. It doesn't just appear from the ether, and assuming you take even moderate precautions when adding things to your tank, it can be kept out permanently, you just need to understand it's life cycle.
Also, not every white speck on your fish is 'ich', and yes it's possible to be overly paranoid. I'd never get too worried, or even start talking about 'ich' unless the fish was covered in dozens/hundreds of conspicuous, unambiguous spots. Knee jerk reactions at the first sign of something that could just as easily be a small grain of sand, a play of light on textured scales, or a million other fleeting skin conditions are more likely to kill your fish than ich is.