I love neon gobies! But let's be honest, I love almost all gobies. I wouldn't say that I've seen them clean fish all that well though.
There's a big debate about ich, from what I remember. The question is: are you ever able to truly get rid of it or is it present in the tank at all times? This deals with whether the ich microorganism is an obligate parasite or whether it can stay dormant someplace in the tank and survive. I am on the side of: ich is present in your tank at all times and you will basically never get rid of it completely. If you start your tank with clean water, use fake rocks, and new sand you might never have ich BUT the second you add rocks that have been near fish or fish themselves, I believe you're dosing your tank with all sorts of microorganisms.
Now PLENTY of these microorganisms are good for your tank...otherwise you wouldn't "cycle" and you'd always have ammonia, right? But some, like the ich parasite can cause a problem. I believe they cause an issue when their numbers get too high and they can overwhelm a fish. I also firmly believe that certain species of fish are MORE sensitive to ich than others e.g. blue/hippo tangs, powder blue/brown/achilles tangs. In my humble opinion, these fish should only be kept by people who have large established reef tanks with plenty of live rock who feed them very nutritious foods (including garlic and vitamins daily) and who have a backup UV sterilizer to use ONLY when the ich spots are visible on fish. Obviously I'm not directing this at our post-starter because he doesn't have these fish and he does have a UV...just making a general statement.
Some people believe that if they leave their tanks "fishless" for a while they can somehow kill off the ich parasites and their system will be ich-less. These people are unknowingly jumping into the camp of "ich is only an obligate parasite and unable to survive without fish as part of its lifecycle."
As I siad, I tend to believe that the ich parasites ARE ABLE to survive in the tank somewhere for long periods of time without causing big problems for fish. I do not know if the parasites are encysting and surviving in the sand/rocks or whether small numbers of them are surviving in the gills...but I bet it's living in there somewhere.
I'd have to do some research on this topic to really be able to post with any scientific backing BUT this is the amount of knowledge I have accumulated in the 16 years I've been reefing and a scientist...take it for what it's worth.