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How long should it be bewteen ICH symptoms?

Dyngoe

Dyngoe

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Hi All,

You may have heard about my massive exodus of my fish to a QT tank because I feared ICH on my fish. In truth I wasn't complete 100% sure there was ICH, but could have been microbubbles on the skin. The fish in question never "scratched" on rocks or had any other symptoms but I wanted to be sure.

OK....now I have had them in QT (without medication) for just over two weeks and have only seen 'possible' symptoms once for one day but again I think it may have been microbubbles from my skimmer. Besides that one day the fish in question and all of the others have not shown any symptoms. So, the question is "how long should it take before the symptoms are visible"? Now, I know it can stay dormant for A LONG time but they have been stressed and the water quality is not perfect so I thought they would show much quicker and often.
 
Dyngoe,

The recommended quarantine period for Ich is 6-8 weeks. I can't remember if that is one or two life cycles of the parasite. Someone else had an Ich thread, I think it was...hang on , let me look
 
dont quote me and im sure many will chime in but arent there are many things ive heard about ich. One being it goes in stages 3 if remember correctly. One stage is on the fish where you can see it, another where it gets off of fish goes into sand bed and lays eggs, and lastly coming outta sand bed into water attaching onto fish again. Way it goes is each time is strong being eggs means more and more. I think there are a few reasons people move them to quarentine one being to medicate. But, the biggest reason is the ich that lays eggs in your sand bed needs a host to survive (your fish). Remove the fish remove the food source and the ich dies. There is also much said about temperature like warmer speeds up metabalic process therefore getting rid of the ich faster. Dont know how much of that is true or not but ive seen it enough so im sure there is some merit. The 6 - 8 week quarentine is a general guidline to letting the ich die out of your tank. Not sure if that is all and im sure things forgot but that is what ive read here and there. Lastly, it takes about 3 days for fish to lay eggs in sand and cycle again in your tank. That number is affected by each persons individual tank (think that is where temperature comes into play, cooler temps mean longer cycles)
 
Thanks Norm,

I know the routine, but I'm wondering if I have Ich at all. Like I said, it almost looks like it could have been just an over-reaction to microbubbles on the skin. So, I was wondering how long it should take before Isee symptoms on my fish in QT?
 
From a url posted in the other thread:

Biology:

The lifecycle of the parasite is interesting and important to understand when evaluating a treatment. The stage where the parasite is attached to a fish is called a trophont. The trophont will spend three to seven days (depending on temperature) feeding on the fish. After that, the trophont leaves the fish and becomes what is called a protomont. This protomont travels to the substrate and begins to crawl around for usually two to eight hours, but it could go for as long as eighteen hours after it leaves it's fish host. Once the protomont attaches to a surface, it begins to encyst and is now called a tomont. Division inside the cyst into hundreds of daughter parasites, called tomites, begins shortly thereafter. This noninfectious stage can last anywhere from three to twenty-eight days. During this extended period, the parasite cyst is lying in wait for a host. After this period, the tomites hatch and begin swimming around, looking for a fish host. At this point, they are called theronts, and they must find a host within twenty-four hours or die. They prefer to seek out the skin and gill tissue, then transform into trophonts, and begin the process all over again (Colorni & Burgess, 1997).
Click to expand...

So you can figure worst case like this:

7 days at trophant
.75 days at protomont
28 days at tomont/tomite
1 day at theront

So that would be about 37 days for a cycle.

The number of parasites amplifies with each generation. It's possible that you might miss a few if the infestation is light.

You could wait for 2 full cycles to see if anything shows up.

Though if your fish are healthy, they may be reinfected, but not to the degree that you can easily tell also.
 
So if you're gonna quarantine, you might as well do a hypo quarantine.

The hypo won't hurt the fish, and you don't have to worry about missing parasites that might be present but hard to detect.
 
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