Well, I'm at the end of my second week of dealing with the ich. My rusty angel, damsel, and one of my clarkii clowns had it. I found out my nitrates were nearly off the charts - about 100 (I still have yet to figure out how that happened). Anyway, the three fish that had symptoms were hard to catch. They were very good at hiding in the rocks, and I was affraid if I tried too much, it would put undue stress on them. So, I decided to treat them in the main tank, not ideal I know. I have no corals, and for inverts I just have snails, one hermit crab, and two urchins (which showed no signs of stress in these high nitrates, which I don't understand that either). So, I found a method of feeding metronidizole to fish, and also read that a micron filter cartridge can do almost as good of a job as a UV sterilizer, so I ran that in my filter. Per my lfs, I fed the metronidizole to the fish, and added it directly to my tank. They told me to only do that for five or six days since the medication, long term, might do damage to the fishes liver (I think they said liver....it was some kind of organ lol)...anyway, after the fifth day I stopped since it looked like the ich was gone from everyone. Meanwhile, I've been doing tons of WC to get my nitrates down (now they are almost to 40). Um, what was your question again? lol oh right...my tank is FOWLR with some inverts.
I know my treatmen of ich isn't ideal, but I'm hoping it worked. Obviously my main problem was the water quality, and I'm sure that's what started this. If it does come back, I'll go the hyposalinity route. But fingers crossed.
But I guess my original question still is can ich do permanent damage to a fish's eye?