UV Sterilizer??????

[Zivman]

Originally Posted by Sea monkey

LOL i have never cleaned mine. maybe it is about time, dont think you will catch me doing it every other week though : )

bi-MONTHLY, not weekly

[epidemic]

From my understanding ICH is always in your tank, but your fish only catch it if they are stressed for any reason.

[Graham]

The life cycle of the ich parasite requires the fish as a host for part of the life cycle. If no host is found, the parasite dies before completing the life cycle - 28 days total. One must assume that the ich will be in various forms of the life cycle at any given point. With that, it's reasonable to assume that if you don't see anything on the fish for 28+ days since the last "affliction", the parasite has been eradicated.

To my knowledge, the parasite doesn't lay dormant long-term.

[Sea monkey]

Originally Posted by epidemic

From my understanding ICH is always in your tank, but your fish only catch it if they are stressed for any reason.

The life cycle of the ich parasite requires the fish as a host for part of the life cycle. If no host is found, the parasite dies before completing the life cycle - 28 days total.

i have heard both of these before.

i suppose its possible the fish themselves are carriers and while they are not showing symptoms they could be carrying the disease on some minuet level that doesn't cause them to actually get sick until stress lowers their immune system.


this is kinda different but in grade school i used to be a carrier of strep throat but id never get sick. The only way you knew i had it was everyone around me had it. one day half the class wouldn't show up and they knew exactly who to blame : )

[reefgeek84]

Add galic "juice" to the food you feed them..I use seachem, because Kent apparently thinks thier stuff is gold...But either way I have seen a huge difference with garlic.

[Graham]

FWIW...

The infective cycle that lives on the fish is the only form that lives on the fish. It lasts 3-7 days. The rest of the time they are either in the water column or associated with the substrate. No other part of the life cycle can live on the host. It's a very typical parasite life cycle.

I encourage anyone interested to google the "lifecycle of Cryptocaryon irritans" and look for something with a scientific (rather than commercial) basis to it.

[eswebster]

Graham I have read about the life cycle of the organism from an online article posted by from some professor at a college out east somewhere, I read exactly what you just stated, however once the fish is infected the parasite will contine to grow and spread on its host, eventually if untreated the organism/prasite will burrow under the flesh of its host becoming much more difficult to treat and leathal to the fish. Its great stuff belive me, I have lost about half of my tank inhabitants now by messing around with water changes and water parameters. What I think happened is that when I introduced some new fish, they were infected with the organism/parasite at the stage where it is hosted by the fish, from this point I am thinking that it was able to spread in this stage to the other tank inhabitants.

[Graham]

It doesn't grow on the host. That part of the lifecylce only lasts 3-7 days. Any increase in parasite load on the fish is due to more new theronts emerging from the benthos and attaching to the fish. The theront form has 24 hours to attach to a host or it dies, but the form on the fish is tRansient - that form of the organism itself doesn't spread.

[redwinger]

Also if there is no host for the parasite eventually they will all die off. In other words if the tank sits fishless for about 6 weeks and the Ich is treated in a seperate tank the ich will be gone unless you reintroduce it again.

[Sea monkey]

it was my understanding that some people have had break outs of ich on tangs where the tank has been up a while and a new fish hasn't been introduced for six months to a year. guess that's what i thought led to the idea that it is always present.

[redwinger]

Here is a good read on it.
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/tr...marineich.html

[90_berlin_joe]

Start feeding using the Formual 2 which has garlic added for this reason. It does help i have 4 tang not one has ich and i just went through a 180 off the scale nitrate spike ( alot of stress) did not lose a thing.( not saying this is the cure to all nitrate problems but with helathy fish things like that dont harm them as much.

[eswebster]

that was a good read, redwinger, I have actually been feeding them the formula two, definatly stinks of garlic..... I pretty much lost all fish that dont have some kind of immunity, clown and dragonette, to the ICK, sucks bigtime, but I have learned another lesson in reef keeping, albeit a costly one.

[mickey57]

I don't really know if this is appropiate here but I sense you are in need of a good UV...I have a 25watt "Current-Gamma" up for bids on ebay.I am moving up to a 180gal and this UV is rated for 125gal.
................Mickey