I just went through an ich infestation recently.
I had people telling me to use garlic, buy cleaner wrasses, do nothing, rip my tank apart, use UV (I already was using UV), pray to Neptune, do a rain dance, etc .etc. most of the advice I was given was based on circumstantial and anecdotal evidence, not based on hard scientific fact.
For every one person that says you HAVE to remove your fish & QT immediately, there's a another saying garlic will cure everything & also improve your chances on the stock market too. Others say that cleaner wrasses will rid your tank of ich & may or may not improve your fertility. UV will kill ich & may also harm your neighbour's annoying pet llama!
So who do you listen to? Well, personally I tried to turn to science.
The evidence I found that was based on science suggested the following:
Using Cleaner Wrasse, Cleaner Shrimp etc. & 'Letting it run it's course' will take almost a year to eliminate ich if you don't add any other potential new source of ich during that time.
Leaving your tank fish free (not an option for many) your tank should be 99.9% ich free within 60 days. 72 days being the longest time ich can survive without a host (fish).
I bought a large tank to QT my fish & treated them with copper & formaldehyde based treatments. They showed no signs of ich after 2 weeks of treatment.
I kept them in QT for around 10 weeks & my main reef tank was fish free during that time.
I'll always make sure I QT everything before it goes near my reef in the future.
One link that was sent to me by Dave (WickedFags) put most of the scientific evidence in one easy to read webpage.
Marine Ich
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