Help, Blue Hippo Tang with ich

[TrishK]

Hi all! I wanted to give you an update and say again how grateful I am to all of you and having found this great place full of lovely helpful people. The spots are fading away on the tang, you can barely see them today and none of the others have any spots....yet. So.....can I begin hoping that this is over for now? Also, this goes especially to fishguy and uncle99 who seem really knowledgeable on blue tangs. Do the spots on the tang mean ich or a stressful tang condition? I am asking because from all your information here, I understand that if it is indeed ich, it is here to stay in the tank....does this mean that it can strike again on other fish anytime? It seems strange, because I never had ich before and I have not added any new fish to the tank in the last 2-3 weeks and the pair of clowns I added then was fully quarantined at the LFS-they had them for months before I bought them. So, if it is ich, where did it come from?

it could’ve come in on the clowns. They have a thick mucus coating and can be a Carrier but not show signs. I have a large yellow tang that’s been exposed to ich but never showed symptoms. I had to QT him and my watchman goby after a velvet outbreak I believe came from coral I neglected to dip so had to run fallow for 76 days. I didn’t know this about tang at the time otherwise I would’ve treated him and the goby for ich before adding any fish back after the fallow period so now I think it’s in my DT again. None of our fish have ever showed signs (they do go through QT) but they are all fish with thick mucus coatings. We just added a hippo and bang, like everyone else seems to experience she has at least 7 spots on her. I am waiting to see if she beats it. Praying.

 

[Uncle99]

Ick can come from anything wet going in your tank. Once their cycle starts they start to replicate 100-200 times a cycle.
Ick is a parasite which will die out if there are no fish hosts, somewhat like COVID-19. Like COVID-19, it can replicate itself, attach to a host, feed for some days, then fall of the fish, attach to substrate, multiply by the hundreds, and the whole cycle starts again. Like COVID-19, it preys mostly on the weak and cannot be extinguished unless their is no host.
Some fish are strong enough to be immune, every once in a while, my blue tangs shows some spots, more easily seen under strictly blues, then, gone.
This has been going on for 3 years now and I have not lost a fish.
One of the best ways to avoid ick is to keep fish well fed and under low stress.