Does fish get bad breath?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Hmmmm, your fish are weird.
From just one tiny dipping of pellets into garlic, My oscar acted like I had poured acid in his mouth or something.
He swam around screaming underwater, gagging, & hacking his throat dry.
Then refused to touch food for days. but he would STARE at it sideways with one eye while simultaneously repelling himself away from it, using just one pectoral fin.
Sometimes he did slow loops around the pellets (vertically up & down), which HAD NO FRESH GARLIC WHATSOEVER after that first day.
I became convinced that it had actually burned his mouth & I felt guilty for weeks.
Now you have posted photographic evidence that he was straight up LYING to me.
 
I've given my fish lettuce and other veggies like cucumber and spinach. I can personally vouch that Giant Gouramy's will eat any and all veggies you put in the tank. My vieja cichlids used to destroy lettuce
 
Garlic has been used for centuries for its anthelmintic properties, and contains bioactive compounds that thus far have clearly been proven to have a probiotic effect on fish. Some of the compounds found in garlic have been shown to have biological effects in fish such as growth promotion, immunostimulation, anti-stress, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-virals, anti-protozoal, and appetite stimulators.

Having said that, I would personally recommend never feeding garlic cloves, garlic oil, or any purified form of garlic to any species of fresh or marine fish.

The reason being is that terrestrial based lipids are generally bad for fish, and when fed in excessive amounts (even over a very short time frame) can cause serious internal organ, blood cell, and gastrointestinal issues. Serious enough to in some cases cause death.

The difference between a nutrient, a drug, and a toxin, is typically the dosage.


http://ecology.nottingham.ac.uk/~plzfg/EBBSoc/ejb5/Al_Salahy_&_Mahmoud_2003.pdf


If you are feeding a commercial food that contains garlic (which in this case the OP is) there is nothing to gain (and lots to potentially lose) by feeding even more garlic, especially in a pure form such as raw garlic cloves.

HTH
 
I'm very pro garlic in fish food, and have probably researched its use, and over the years posted about it on fish forums (including here on MFK) more than any other person out there.

The problem is that histopathological changes within internal organs cannot be seen with the naked eye.

I'm also very familiar with the "experiments" that Jack Wattley & Terry Fairfield performed on discus suffering from nematode infestation. Would a 5 week treatment such as what they performed to rid their fish of these pathogens cause irreversible fatty deposits in their fish? Not likely. Some studies have suggested that even in fish that exhibit excess lipid deposition & necrosis of the liver, the condition can be reversed if the diet is corrected before the condition becomes too far advanced.

But Jack & Terry weren't feeding garlic cloves to the fish, and in their following necropsies they were only looking for the presence of any surviving nematodes, not histopathological changes within internal organs, the fishes blood, etc.

A LOT of research, including peer reviewed studies have taken place since Jack & Terry were testing its use with nematodes, and thus far with both the fresh water & marine species tested, using the forms of garlic that I previously mentioned have shown some seriously negative results.

Not looking to argue, just giving a heads up to anyone that stumbles across this thread and thinks that this might be a healthy addition to their feeding regimen.
 
The study involving marine fish is as far as I know unpublished, so you won't find it doing a google search. But if you go back to post #14 in this discussion I posted a link to a study involving a species of freshwater catfish, and garlic juice extracted from fresh cloves.

Here's a link to a post I made several months back which explains why the garlic used in commercial fish food is safe. (almost zero lipid content)

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?458994-Garlic-and-the-Prevention-of-Disease
 
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