How I Defeated Ich

I'm not sure if anyone else has tried this before, as I'm sure someone else has thought of this at some point, but I'm just going to share what I tried to get rid of ich and it worked perfect for me....
Awhile back I brought home a beautiful, healthy pygmy angelfish for my tank.  The next day, it had about 10 ich spots on it.  The day after that, it was completely covered in ich, and my barnacle blennies had a couple ich spots on them, as well as my pipefish.  I freaked out.  (Yes, this is a good time to point out why QUARANTINE should be used.)
I started reading all of my possible options... copper based meds, will kill all my corals/inverts...  lower salinity, raise temp, all of these options that were risky and were not going to be safe for my corals.  Anything that was safe for my corals, probably wasn't going to kill the ich.  I really started to freak out.  I could see my little barnacle blennies starting to scratch themselves on the rocks.  It got bad quickly! 
I knew garlic has been rumored to help guard against parasites and a lot of products contain garlic, and I'd put garlic in my food before when I suspected ich, but I've never had a breakout like this.  Honestly, I didn't think I'd beat this.
I bought a fresh clove of garlic from the grocery store, opened it up and took a couple large pieces of garlic and smashed them with a spoon and put it in a small sealed tubberware container with saltwater, thawed shrimp, and clam pieces.  I let it marinate in the fridge for a day.  The next day pulled out those pieces of shrimp and clams and fed them to my fish.  The next day almost all of the ich spots were gone!  I still was worried they would reappear the next day.  I continued to feed this to my fish for 5 days straight after that. 
That was a couple weeks ago and the ich has not returned.  I can't guarantee this method will work for anyone else, but for me it was a lifesaver.  Might be worth a try, and hopefully it helps someone else.
Removing the fish when possible into another tank probably is best, however if anyone has ever seen a barnacle blenny in a rock hole, you'd understand that's just not possible....

 

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the organism in the water, will die after a few days without a host, so if the garlic is fed long enough to keep them from finding a viable host, they should die. Plus they are removed with frequent water changes. It could reappear I suppose, as ich can show up in any tank, but so far so good for me.

 

Yeah, I think I'll just do my best to keep them destressed and hope for the best. If it were just the pygmy angel and pipefish, I'd have removed them, but barnacle blennies are impossible to get out of the live rock. Crossing my fingers I garlic'd the ich to death. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/smile.gif