I had whitespot in my 4ft tank a few weeks back. Has had numerous water changes since and all the remaining fish are healthy and happy, if a little lonely . I was told today that I would need to completely strip the tank down and sterilise it before adding new fish as the whitespot would be lieing dormant in the tank and would infect any new fish. Is this true and if so what do I need to do?

Mods, please can you remove the multiple threads, my fault for being impatient. cheers.

hahaha, Good work. Many multiple Posts

I dont think sterilizing is nessasary, I just did the normal Whitespot cure and higher Temp

hahaha, Good work. Many multiple Posts

MMP = many multiple posts

All done fattycatty :lol: getting carried away with the submit button aye :lol:

Forums seem to be running slow at the moment, pages taking ages to load....

That seems like overkill!

Anyway, whitespot DOES NOT have a dormant stage, despite the rather hard-to-kill myth.

Indeed stripping the tank down would mean putting the fish into a completely uncycled tank and risk all sorts of problems with the stresses of cycling...

Whitespot may remain undetected inside the gills for a few lifecycles. As long as you were thorough and kept treating the fish for at least a week after the last visible spots were gone you should be fine. The reason for this is because the only time the parasite is killable is when it is free-swimming, a tiny part of its lifecycle.

For a very interesting and in-depth article about whitespot look here: http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml

The most important thing to spot a new whitespot infection now is to quarantine any new fish (or indeed anything else) that goes into your tank for at least two weeks.