Ich questions

Hey,

So a few months back I got Ich. I hadn't added anything to the tank in literally months, but it appeared and it was a resistant pain in the ass. The malachite didn't work for a few months straight, so I upped the temps and nuked it with copper. This escalated to a triple dose of copper for literally 2 months straight. It was crazy, but finally it disappeared. I'm shocked my fish lived through it, especially my scaleless catfish (synodontis from Tanganyika are badasses though.) It was to the point where I almost had to get my hands on some fromaldehyde.

It has been ~4 months of goodness, nothing has been added. I just saw one of my fish scratch tonight. I am baffled at where it could be coming from. Is it possible that this was an isolated scratching event where maybe one of his scales got buggered up and he just needed to shed it? How long can the cysts survive in a zero water environment? Maybe one of them lived in a bucket I haven't used in literally months and sat dry? That would be rather extreme, I'm told ich doesn't transfer if you dry out the tank for a few weeks, this has been literally 4 months of dry non use on the bucket which may not even have ever been exposed to the ich.

Either way, if this crap comes back I'm gonna freak out. Especially cause in both cases nothing has been added. I don't even use feeders anymore for fear of that crap unless they come directly from a breeder of like guppies that are doing culls or something. You know, reliable places. Even then, it's been literally 8 months since feeders of any kind.

I'm sure for anyone that's had ich you're on high alert at all times like "did my fish just scratch" out of the corner of your eye. It's funny, only the cichlids scratched. The catfish and bichirs don't appear to care about ich at all.

I am pretty sure it was ich, they did have a few cysts present on the bichirs. If they continue to scrach I'll try gill fluke treatment first, though no idea where it came from unless tapwater?

I was using quite a bit of salt as well as 85F....this was a really resilient bastard!

Ah. Yah the one that was in the bucket for a few days is definitely scratching. Since flukes don't make cysts, I'm gonna assume this is ich again. Time to hit up the store, lol

Actually it might be the flukes. That would explain why the ich treatment failed until I used copper. Is it possible for flukes to come back after several months without adding anything to the tank?

Nothing was added, at all. I think what it might be is that the fishes slime coat was buggered up while it was in a bucket for a few days. The water it was housed in was from the tank it lived in just fine before and the bucket had been unused in like 4 months. The temperature is about 80F.

I'm pretty sure that the cyst stage in the lifecycle can actually be prolonged. Tons of invertebrates do this to combat dry spells in ephemeral ponds, though admittedly I don't have a lot of first hand experience with protozoans (I did however take freshwater invertebrate biology in university)

I am not overly worried, I've only seen two scratches. I really just think it might have been a mild bacterial issue that resolved itself, but if it gets worse there is always meds. Thanks!