Ich or sand?

[m2434]

I keep seeing threads where people see white spots on their fish and assume its ich. I always see white spots on my fish and have never treated them for ich. Also, I have never had a fish die... So I have to ask, is it really ich or something else?

I suspect that sometimes it's actually sugar sand or small pieces of rock. If your powerhead blows a bit of sand into the water, maybe it can stick to your fish...

I've seen cases where there were lots of white spots on a fish, and said definatly ich. The fish would swim through powerheads and it would stay there, but then watching longer, would see the power head hit it dead on and watch the white-spot drift away
(but the white spots are often there for hours!).

There are two obvious possibilities
1) ich
2) sand/rock

If a fish is misdiagnoed with ich, and treated for ich, the stress from treating it could certainly kill it by itself. And you go on thinking the fish had ich...

Of sourse it could be that my fish have healthy imune systems and just fight the ich off, but I'm not really sure... I am almost certain, that it would be very difficult to tell in the early stages.

So the question is, how do you tell for sure that it is early stage ich and not just something sticking to the fish?

[filmoholic]

I have had this happen for sure. IMO things can def stick to the fish as you said. There have been days no doubt I thought it was ich but there where little white sand/something on them.