"Big Habeeb" wrote in message oups.com...
You know its funny to read about these ich outbreaks - I was under the
impression that ich had a very difficult time surviving in salt, this
belief even further cultivated because I never had a problem with
outbreaks in any of my sal****er fish only tanks...but constantly had
ich issues in my standard freshwater setups.

Parasites we are talking about are known in freshwater and
sal****er environments. They are killed by sudden changes
of salinity, and one of the method of curing infected sal****er
fish is freshwater dip for some short time (until fish starts to
show signs of clear and heavy discomfort).

Ich in a reef tank is not curable with chemicals. Chemicals would
kill all your beneficial live rock dwellers. So it is even more
important to quarantine when you have a reef tank...

Preaching this I have to admit that quite recently I added a piece
of live rock into my old, stable setup running without ich for
many YEARS and I got instant ich infection on my tang fish.
Knowing how difficult is to cure ich in a reef and how deadly
it can be to the fish I had to get 2 skunk cleaner shrimps.
(Lysmata amboinensis)
They are beautiful to look at and also a perfect biological
weapon in a battle agains ich. They pick the parasite from
the fish and eat it, so I could recommend these little buggers
for you as a kind of "ich insurance". It was quite amazing
to watch this fish like a kind of doctor curing my fish and the
fish willingly subject itself to the procedure... However it
was not as spectacular as in the "Finding Nemo" movie... ;-)

This does not free you from the duty of keeping quarantine tank
since ich is not the only the problem introduced with new fish.