"ALL FISH HAVE ICH" Fact or Theory

[Triggerfish]

ok,,,after a year of reading about marine ich and my own personal experience over the past 13 months dealing with it, i have not heard of this theory until today.

I would like to begin a discussion here involving possible scientific literature sources available or anyone's documented personal experiences that could possibly authenticate this theory.

If this is indeed fact, then:
1. What would quarantining for ich parasites actually accomplish?
2. Could all the ich cells that are within the fish's body be destroyed by some type of medication/procedure and thus fully eradicating the parasite from the fish?
3. If pre-treated, couldn't they just grow back?

I will start off by quoting 2 recent comments i have seen surrounding this theory.

Originally posted by J4Life
Excuse my ignorance here but I have read that Ich is actually already present within all fish same as the cells that cause cancer in humans. Whether a fish gets Ich has to do with certain factors that cause the cells to transform into Ich and become active.

Such as unnecessary stress, malnutrition, illness separate from Ich, etc. I have never lost a fish with Ich. As long as the fish will eat and gets a proper diet Ich will go away.

Originally posted by Jeffie
That is right. All fish have ick in them like all humans have cancer in them.. There's many factors that can set off both.. fish( stress, etc.) humans (smoking, family genes,etc.)

[Travis L. Stevens]

I wouldn't necessarily say that. Ich is a parasite. Their life cycle is in three stages. In the substrates and rocks, free swimming, and then in the host and is usually found in the white cysts. A fish can have ich without having cysts though. But I haven't seen any proof that all fish have ich. In short, I believe that though all fish might not have ich, all fish should be treated as though they are infected and should be properly quarintined.

As for Jeffie's comment, cancer is malignant human cells. Ich is a free living parasite that needs a host to complete its reproductive cycle.

Lastly, though you have a fish or tank that seems ich free, doesn't mean that the fish or tank actually is ich free. So, when you have something like a tang in QT for a great amount of time, and then it goes to the display and "contracts" ich, there is no real way of knowing whether the tang had ich, or if your display has ich. Most likely it was your display though.

[Skipper]

Here's my experience in about 12 years of reefkeeping:

I've never had an ICH outbreak. I have had a couple of fish many years ago that appeared to have it, but it never escalated to being a problem. Do I quarantine? No.

Is not quarantining recommended? No, please don't think I'm recommending it.

[Steven Pro]

What we call marine ich is a parasite called Cryptocaryon irritans. It is an old aquarium hobby/industry myth that ich is always present. It can be completely eradicated.

[Sk8r]

One great problem is that ich is present somewhere along the chain of possession in the industry, right down to the local fish store. Any exposure of the water to that water, be it a wet fish, could transfer ich parasites to the new system. Quarantine functions as a last waystop, perhaps a little stressful, in which ich may manifest and be treated before the fish arrives in the home tank.

[Jeffie]

You can take a healthy fish that has been thru the treatments to erradicate crypto and move him to a stressful situation(water quality stability, space, ample territory, aggression, etc.) and more then likely the fish will end up with ick again.. there's many reasons why ick gets set off. In a properly maintained healthy system you should never see it.
Doesn't mean that once you put a fish thru the treatment and erradicated the pest that it will never come back because it can.
For the cancer statement- It just goes to show that it is oppertunistic(sp?) like cancer can be...

[Triggerfish]

Originally posted by Jeffie
You can take a healthy fish that has been thru the treatments to erradicate crypto and move him to a stressful situation(water quality stability, space, ample territory, aggression, etc.) and more then likely the fish will end up with ick again.. there's many reasons why ick gets set off. In a properly maintained healthy system you should never see it.
Doesn't mean that once you put a fish thru the treatment and erradicated the pest that it will never come back because it can.

Jeff,, wasn't it you that awhile ago mentioned the large aquarium you work for puts all incoming livestock through hyposalinity treatement and since doing so have not had any issues?
i mean why bother, just keep a healthly system and you would never see it..
if it wasn't you then i got to find out who it was that uses that quarantine method.

heck,,every time a fish is netted, and there probably isn't anything more stressful than that, ich should just appear,,no?.. many many fish i have netted 2-3 times within same day and i have never seen existence of the parasite.

part of the lifecycle is visible to the eye. as the parasite grows from gorging itself on the fishes body the area where the parasite has attached will become visible..hence the white spots that are so common.

i have been keeping FO tanks for the past 9 yrs in all sorts of conditions. NH3 levels over 100ppm for years, no skimmer, temp swings all over hells creation, salt levels up and down, stress from:incompatibility, extreme temps in qt's that hit over 100 and another that went to 62, stuck in filter intakes, stuck in powerhead intakes(hippo tang of all fish to reference), jumping out of tank falling on floor, tank maintenance, netting, dipping, bathing, overfeeding, underfeeding, other diseases, scaring the heck out of them, you name it,,i have done it more than once.

i had one case of ich in that time that i can remember and that was a hippo tang that i had introduced..

funny thing..now that my tank water is far more stable,cleaner, less fish, i have been battling ich for 13 str8 months.
in case you're wondering,,i added 40lbs of LR that was ich infested..10 days later my fish are visibly infected.. this tank had no ich sightings for at least 3 continuous years.

there are variables that i agree with that can keep the parasite population from exploding. that's not the discussion here though. eventually if ich is in the system and unless the system is extremely large and very unpopulated you will see something over the years.

the parasite comes from the outside to inside the flesh of the fish...the lifecycle moves along and feeds off the fish then exits and forms a cycst on possibly anything. the cyst ruptures after a number of days of muliplying tomites, finds a host(non-invert) cycle begins again ..this goes on and on..
if you kill the parasite in any of it's 4 stages it can not continue to the next part of the cycle..the dang thing is dead..
the difficult part of eradication is killing all of them..

if you treat an infected fish in QT with copper for 3 weeks and do not notice the parasite for 6 weeks after you noticed the last evidence of the parasite, then you can be reasonably sure..talking 99% or greater the fish is clean. you mention it can come back,,then your agruement would need to be either.
1. the parasite can just grow from within the fish's body at any time and or...
2. the parasite can just manifest itself from the presence of water

you're gonna have to elaborate on the "once eradicated ich can come back theory" a bit.. any type of reference you can locate would be of most interest..i got to see that study for my own eyes that would totally void the need for quarantine.

also..for the argument that the gills can be infested thus not being able to see the visible indications of infestation, you will notice behavioral characteristics that the fish is infested with something in that area..
basically i can say that after dealing with this current strain for over a year, i have witnessed both the varying indications of the parasites existence as well as the physical breakdown of the fish after repeated attacks.

i have also noticed that it is not easy for an overall healthy fish to be overtaken,,they can endure multiple attacks over a few months. what i have noticed is that as the fish slowly breaks down the parasite eventually manifests into the gill area..hence this was not the 1st place of attack,,but typically the last along with the eyes. once that happens the fish will need pretty drastic intervention on the hobbysist part to help out. basically the fish slowly suffocates to death.

BTW: did i mention i am an "Ich Eradicator" and am on a
"QUEST TO BE ICH FREE" Let the quest continue....................

[TellyFish]

Amazing... with all the info available there are still so many misconceptions and confusion about marine disease.

Its my experience that once the parasite has been treated PROPERLY, it NEEDS to be reintroduced via a foreign fish in order to make a reappearance. Otherwise where is it coming from? You are basically suggesting that the parasite can live dormant despite treatment... and to my knowledge theres simply no data out there to support that idea.

Thank God for science... lol.

[TellyFish]

Originally posted by Jeffie
Doesn't mean that once you put a fish thru the treatment and erradicated the pest that it will never come back because it can.

hmmm... I think something must have been missed durring treatment?

Or introduced a new fish- sans quarentine... My $.02

[Triggerfish]

Originally posted by Jeffie
Doesn't mean that once you put a fish thru the treatment and erradicated the pest that it will never come back because it can.

Originally posted by TellyFish
hmmm... I think something must have been missed durring treatment?

that would depend if he is going by just a theory he has irregardless of experience or actually what he has experienced.

and based on what and how he believes the parasite to be eradicted could shed some light on why it reappeared.

treatment methods, procedures, durations and timeline recommendations vary considerably from different references. so specifics are going to be needed to shed some light on this theory...

heck,,,the misconceptions are so widespread,,many hobbyist think that after they fed the fish garlic and didn't see whitespots for 10 days that the fish was cured and then the parasite came back... because the temp dropped 2 degrees overnight..

[Steven Pro]

Originally posted by Jeffie
You can take a healthy fish that has been thru the treatments to erradicate crypto and move him to a stressful situation(water quality stability, space, ample territory, aggression, etc.) and more then likely the fish will end up with ick again.. there's many reasons why ick gets set off. In a properly maintained healthy system you should never see it.
Doesn't mean that once you put a fish thru the treatment and erradicated the pest that it will never come back because it can.
For the cancer statement- It just goes to show that it is oppertunistic(sp?) like cancer can be...

Only if in that stressful situation the parasite already exists. If the fish is cured of the original infestation, all the stress in the world cannot make it appear out of thin air.

[only4fudge]

Ive had my share of ich, it didnt kill anything in my aquarium, I noticed it on my tangs a few weeks after I had them acclimated into the tank.

I started to notice the white spots and all they would do is hide all day, and rarely eat.

I just left everything the way it was, and fortunately, everything came out fine, they havent had ich for months.

I was about to purchase all the qt equipment, but felt that it was a total waste of money, where I can just isolate it in the same tank, or just let nature take its path.

[only4fudge]

The main thing that got me worried, was that the larger blue tang 4-5", kept rubbing its body on the lr, leaving tons of scars, soon it healed and it started to eat a lot better.

[Freed]

Once again, too bad we can't weed out all the junk myth info and just leave the posts like Steve Pro and others that know what they are talking about. Yeah, go ahead and shoot me.

[Jeffie]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Triggerfish
[B]ok,,,after a year of reading about marine ich and my own personal experience over the past 13 months dealing with it,

[Jeffie]

We don't have 10+ year old fish like this because we don't know what we are talking about with a 12 yr old system....
As for dealing with ick for 13 months.... I'm not even going to get into it with you triggerfsh like before. If your fish were quarantined and in a healthy system you shouldn't be dealing with anything for 13 months... Heres's picks of our old 16" mated pair of french angels and a 15 lbs. puffer that is 12 yrs. old in quarantine recovering after having his tail chewed on. The sohal next to him is 13" and is on a time out...








I can post many more but I'm not going to. I didn't work with the head vet from the Shedd for nothing..
Treat your animals and put them back into your obviously stressful situation and let me know how that turns out for ya...

[Triggerfish]

Jeff.. as mentioned many times..my system contracted the parasite from 40lbs of LR i got from a fellow reefer.. he mentioned at the time his tank has issues with ich,,his fish looked good however, and i really didnt put the ich on rock probability together prior to adding it in my tank. again,,did not come from unquarantined fish

so is it your system that you maintain that hypo's all incoming livestock? can i ask for what reason that would be? i am under the impression that hypo is performed for the destruction and eradication of ich. i mean if you add ich to the healthy system that already has it,,what would it matter, the fish can deal with it in the healthy system.

also,,can you define healthy system for fish only, what are the parameters? ..please list everything that you would reference as a healthy system.. also..while your at it..also list conditions of an unhealthy system and i'm not talking a temp fluc of +-1d.

i'm just curious how out of whack everything is in my system that is allowing ich to manifest.

[Freed]

Ich can be carried in on anything that is wet. Doesn't have to only be a fish. Can be live rock, fish, inverts, coral. Everything must be QTd to ensure ich does not make it into the main tank. This does not, however, mean you have to use hypo on everything either as you cannot. You can only perform hypo on fish. Hypo on all others is not necessary nor recommended as without fish to feed off of the ich will not survive.

[kass03]

Triggerfish about 9 years ago my LFS was going out of business so I bought a bunch of live rock to add to my 150 in which prior had live rock and many healthy fish.
The fish seemed to get every disease there was about 2 weeks after including ich although I think it was maybe velvet.
I lost a cpl tangs, mandarin, damsel and others trying different meds but did save a few fish including a tomato clown which I still have and a blue hippo after using a product by Sano.
Anyway after that every summer my blue hippo would seem to get ich when the temps went up.
I had that fish for 8 years until it sadly jumped out of the tank.
The ich would go away on it's own. Sometimes I treated with Sano and sometimes not.
None of my other fish in that tank including the clown, flame angel, coral beauty, kole tang etc. ever got ich.
After the hippo jumped out I added another hippo to that tank and it has never had ich in almost 2 years.

As far as adding the live rock in my case I think the rock prolly caused a small cycle in my tank causing the fish to get sick.

In all my years of keeping SW I've seen fish many times get ich and be the only 1 in the tank to get it and recover from it on their own.
I luckily havent lost any to ich since that time.

I'm one of the believers that it's present on a fish or in the tank all the time and comes out from stress.

kass

[Freed]

Somebody please tell me where the smiley is that smacks himself in the forehead and shakes his head back forth in disbelief, please!!!

[Steven Pro]

Ich can be present all the time, but it does not have to be. If you don't treat your fish, it can exist in low numbers (if it doesn't kill them outright) and flare up from time to time. But, it can be effectively, completely eradicated from fish and the display and never return unless the aquarist reintroduces it.

[trueperc]

I am too a believer in that it can be present all the time. All my fish go thought qting. And there haven't been any signs of ich in my tank for at least 6 months, all I did was move a few rocks around to adjust some sps growth and both my hypo and achilles the next day had a few spots of ich after a week it was all cleared up.
Now I have heard this before and it make sense " that its next to impossible to completely eradicate ich as almost all treatments can only kill ich in one of the stages and that if you seem if on you fish that doesn't mean its all on the same time line. "
But as I have have seen in my tanks over the 6 years I been in the reef hobby, it can be in always be in a tank, just keep you fish healthy and water quality up. This is just my personal experience and what has worked for me.

[Freed]

Are you even reading any of the info in the post previous to yours? Where's that smiley?

[Triggerfish]

Originally posted by only4fudge
or just let nature take its path.

that may work for the most part in a natural environment, however, this approach can have fatal effects within the confines of a closed reproductive system.

[Steven Pro]

Maybe drawing a comparison would help.

Ich can always be present in an aquarium just like lice could always be present in a household. And, just like one can completely eradicate their home of human parasites, one can do the same for fish parasites.

I know I prefer to live without parasites, so I give my fish the same courtesy.