That's probably because you had ick in your tank and never treated it and it was just in a state of low infection so not visible, so when the fish are stressed it all come out, even if it takes a year.

Once you got ick in your tank and if you don't treat for it, it won't go away on its own and will eventually return, as you noticed.

Obviously parasites don't come out of nowhere, but they can also come on corals and frags..this is why I desinfect all my corals.

Apparently a study showed that if no fish are added for 11 months the ich goes thru enough cycles that it diminishes and dies out so this isn't entirely true.

Yes I have heard about this, that after 10 generations it just exhaust itself. Dunno if it is true, but one thing is for sure, if that person got ich without introducing anything new for that long, then ick can surely survive that long as it does not pop out of thin air.

Maybe also the fish develop such strong resistance to the parasite that after a year or so it cannot survive. Not sure what it is. I know some people have ich in their tank and are seing cycle of it coming back even after a very long time.

Got a link to an article on this study Brett? I'd be interested to read it..

It's mentioned in this article.
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...ths-facts.html

Yeah that's the one.

That's assuming it's actually even 'ich'. Unless you take a sample it's guesswork at best.

As I mentioned in my other thread, I lost the queen angel last night. This morning the hippo, xmas wrasse and mandarin are gone. Naso won't likely make it by the time I get the meds needed. The clown looks like it's next. I haven't seen the leopard wrasse, but it looked reasonable last night. A yellow tang seems to be holding up.
I still have a couple of fish in the display, not sure what to do about them, although they seem unaffected.

Lessons learned:

Do not buy impulse fish. I didn't even want the one that caused this, it was the wrong fish.
You cannot successfully setup a new treatment tank to deal with this after the fact, unless you're willing and able to do a 100% water change every day for 4 or 4 weeks. I caused more harm with NH3 than the disease did.

I still cannot have a q tank setup full time for those occasions where you think you want a fish. I will be building a fish list once I can add back to the display, and buy all at the same time and treat in quarantine before adding to the main tank. Once that's done, no additional fish will be added. That's the theory anyway.

Have medication on hand BEFORE you run into this type of scenario. I'll be picking up chloroquine this morning.

Maintaining a spare filter hanging off the main tank isn't practical, as it would require effort to not build up NO3 in the tank.

I suspect that before this week is over, I'll have 2 chromis left....

:cry:

sounds like you could use a few laps around the lake..

What a terrible loss Brad, so sorry to hear this. I wish we had just left the fish as is, but hindsight is a great thing ain't it? How big is your QT tank? Do you think the number of fish/gallons contributed to it? Just a thought.

Where are you getting the chloroquinine? I'm wondering if I should be finding a source as well...