Im a strong believer that ich and other parasites live in our substrate (sand), the sand protects the parasite from medication and also provides a home for them, their food source (our fish) are always available for them to feed on. Even if you go fish less for months the parasites just return to the sand laying in wait. Kinda like hibernating or how some reptiles can go months without a meal. Based on my own personal experience I tried plenty of medication and methods , some worked and others didn’t. I always noticed ich would find its way back. I did some research and decided to remove my sand , based on what I could gather most of our fish in the wild don’t live near the sand bed , in fact they are amongst the upper parts of the reef swimming in and out of rocks or in open water, with the sand bed many many feet below them.
Have you guys ever noticed the only fish to get ich are the ones that live on the upper parts of the reef ? Our sand dwellers never seem to get attacked by ich. Then I started to think about public aquariums, the tanks are usually so large and tall, many of us have to step way back to see the whole thing, but what I always noticed, the fish that we all love and have in our tanks are impossible to see because they are either in the rocks or way up at the top of the tank. And the fish we get close-ups of are usually groupers , sharks and eels (bottom dwellers). Granted these public aquariums usually run ozone and have a ridiculous filtration system.
I believe most of us create the perfect environment for ich. We provide sand as a home , warm water , and our fish as food. Most of our tanks aren’t deep/big enough to have that separation. I struggled with white spot for months and once I removed my sand bed it was like a miracle. Not only did my nitrates and phosphate drop but the ich disappeared. I run ozone also and not having a sand bed gave my skimmer/ozone setup time to come in contact with the parasites.
