Is Ich really present in every batch of saltwater?

[Debramb]

Hi everyone, question, does anyone remember the old diatom filters of yesteryear? Seems like we’d run it for a week or so and ick was gone? I do agree healthy fish are more resilient.
Debra

 

[Debramb]

Oh and BTW we had the all-in-one German system with built in sump with drip trays and bio-balls, etc. I’d put carbon or pyrogen in mesh bags as needed!

 

[Lavey29]

By "dormant" you mean dead and gone, right?? Lol!!

Nope,

 

[Lavey29]

Where is your evidence that it can go dormant again? It has a known life cycle.

Have you seen Paul B's threads on this with his tank where he actually introduces ich covered fish into his system to build immunity?

 

[Lavey29]

I'd be interested in knowing which (if any) companies test home/hobby water for specific parasites/pathogens and what data they've compiled.

I know NOTHING about this so basically just wondering aloud.
...sorry to the OP for the tangent

I'm sure there are studies to be found via Google. I've never had an ich outbreak in my tank but my fish are types less prone to ich and are QT also. My coral beauty had couple dots when he first went in the tank but they disappeared.

Check out Paul B's threads here with his large tank and how he addresses ich in reef tanks to get a real hobbyist perspective in this area.

 

[The_Paradox]

Not sure what level amplification they are doing but this should show if Ich is present

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aquabiomics.com

If it’s not and you never introduce it on something you bring in, it will never be present. No deux ex machina.

 

[Pickle_soup]

Nope,

I guess ich is dormant in my tank for the last 8 years.

 

[Lavey29]

I guess ich is dormant in my tank for the last 8 years.

just the way you want it

 

[Pickle_soup]

just the way you want it

The dormant periods last up to 70 days. That's why fallow tanks typically go over that. I guess some more recent research suggests that 46 days with increased temp will get them going.

 

[The_Paradox]

The dormant periods last up to 70 days. That's why fallow tanks typically go over that. I guess some more recent research suggests that 46 days with increased temp will get them going.

 

[Lavey29]

Do you guys know how many critters and microfauna, pods, brittle stars, sponges, bristle worms, unidentified space monster looking things are in our tanks that none of us have ever intentionally introduced at any time yet they there are? We all have a ton of stuff in our tanks that hitchhiked in so to think that a tiny ich parasite could not catch a ride into your tank at some point is not really logical just based on what we observe already. Now does that automatically mean that your tank becomes ich infected? This is where I believe that healthy strong fish with strong immune systems are able to fend it off. A bad stress situation changes this dynamic though. So if ich is in your tank but your strong healthy fish are fending it off no problem does that mean the parasite eventually dies or goes dormant in some form? I don't know for certain of course but I still operate by the belief that ich gets into my tank in a variety of ways just like all the other hitchikers do some good some bad of course.

 

[Pickle_soup]

Do you guys know how many critters and microfauna, pods, brittle stars, sponges, bristle worms, unidentified space monster looking things are in our tanks that none of us have ever intentionally introduced at any time yet they there are? We all have a ton of stuff in our tanks that hitchhiked in so to think that a tiny ich parasite could not catch a ride into your tank at some point is not really logical just based on what we observe already. Now does that automatically mean that your tank becomes ich infected? This is where I believe that healthy strong fish with strong immune systems are able to fend it off. A bad stress situation changes this dynamic though. So if ich is in your tank but your strong healthy fish are fending it off no problem does that mean the parasite eventually dies or goes dormant in some form? I don't know for certain of course but I still operate by the belief that ich gets into my tank in a variety of ways just like all the other hitchikers do some good some bad of course.

True to a degree, but if you don't have ich, and you QT everything you put in your tank, you should get some spontaneous god-particle-ich in your tank. Just feeding and quality water conditions won't change the fact that certain species of fish are predisposed to getting ich, so if ich is in there, it's going to start multiplying eventually. I do agree that LR is the biggest threat outside of fish.

 

[Lavey29]

True to a degree, but if you don't have ich, and you QT everything you put in your tank, you should get some spontaneous god-particle-ich in your tank. Just feeding and quality water conditions won't change the fact that certain species of fish are predisposed to getting ich, so if ich is in there, it's going to start multiplying eventually. I do agree that LR is the biggest threat outside of fish.

Yes some fish do get it more commonly then others and it certanly could start multiplying in your tank but I think there is evidence to show that strong healthy fish can fend off the ich parasite so what happens to the ich in your tank then? You're not fallow so does the ich die off or does it go into some dormant form undetectable in water samples?

I need @Paul B to better explain the cycle and show how he builds immunity in his tanks.

 

[Miami Reef]

@Lavey29 has a point. There are studies that show ich can go dormant under anoxic (low O2) environments. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0044848617315892

However, if you quarantine everything wet and are super diligent, it is possible to eradicate ich. However, it is very difficult. You must dedicate yourself to the process.

 

[Pickle_soup]

@Lavey29 has a point. There are studies that show ich can go dormant under anoxic (low O2) environments. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0044848617315892

However, if you quarantine everything wet and are super diligent, it is possible to eradicate ich. However, it is very difficult. You must dedicate yourself to the process.

We are talking about very, very low levels, at which pretty much everything in that tank would be dead. You need a minimum of 5-6 mg/l and that's for a select few organisms. And that's just a study you posted.

 

[jda]

I think that we are mixing terms. Dormant is not the right term even if this is what it seems like from a human perspective. What might be more appropriate is that a small amount of the parasite sticks around and continues the lifecycle while never impacting a fish to where we can see it.

What is more likely happening in super mature tanks is that the time spent off of the fish in the tomont phase has the parasite fighting to not become food to the other microfauna in the tank. Lower parasite numbers and healthier fish are good things.

I have never heard if fish can develop parasite immunity to ich. Not all things can develop immunity to parasites and some never do - surely this has been studied, but I have never seen results for ich.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

This happened during my high school years when we had a field trip to the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The marine biologist said Ich is always present in the water.

Back in the day, Steinhart used to draw in water from the bay, it was pretty polluted and bay waters always seem to have higher parasite loads. No doubt that was true - for them then, but not now.

Now days, with artificial seawater and good quarantine practices, marine ich can be very rare. I would consider it non-existent in my systems - no cases since 2015, and those were in quarantine. I haven't had a case of ich in a display tank since the 1980s.

Jay

 

[Lavey29]

The Other Way to Run a Reef Tank (no Quarantine)

The other way to run a reef tank (No Quarantine) I was asked by my friend Humblefish to start a thread on my practices of running a tank with no quarantine, hospital tanks, medications, dipping or almost anything else. It is "not" just to take a fish from a store and drop it in your reef...

www.reef2reef.com

Lot of reading but some real life experience here with reefing

 

[Pickle_soup]

Back in the day, Steinhart used to draw in water from the bay, it was pretty polluted and bay waters always seem to have higher parasite loads. No doubt that was true - for them then, but not now.

Now days, with artificial seawater and good quarantine practices, marine ich can be very rare. I would consider it non-existent in my systems - no cases since 2015, and those were in quarantine. I haven't had a case of ich in a display tank since the 1980s.

Jay

If you have no ich in QT since 2015, where do you buy your fish from?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

If you have no ich in QT since 2015, where do you buy your fish from?

Many different wholesalers and collectors - I should say, there was surely ich on fish coming in, but with the copper quarantine, it never manifests itself into active disease for us. The 2015 case was a group of deep sea fish from Curacao. I was worried about dosing them with copper (I shouldn't have been!) and they developed severe ich. I hit them chloroquine, but that didn't work so I ended up using copper, but since the infection had a good head start, I lost a couple fish.

Jay