Does garlic really make food more appealing to fish?

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iplaylacrosse6

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 10, 2009
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North Carolina
I have a 9inch male Red Devil that I've had for about 6months now and he seems to slowly be getting more and more picky about his food. He loves Hikari Gold pellets (floating, large) and will eat them all day. He used to eat blood worms by the block back when he was smaller and had other tankmates (which he has since killed). but now he will slowly pick at them and then leave them alone.

I have tried to get him to eat market shrimp, frozen krill, live crickets, earthworms, and blackworms, but they dont seem to fancy his taste.

He does eat live ghost shrimp, and wonder shrimp when I put them in there but my LFS doesnt keep them in stock all the time so it is hard to feed them to him regularly. He also loves live snails, if I can find them at my LFS store as well, and I DONT feed him feeder fish, cause I have had bad experiences with HITH in the past and really think feeders are any good.

I guess my question is that I've heard people 'soak' or let their frozen krill/shrimp sit in garlic for a couple hours almost marinating it before trying to feed it to their fish. I wanted to know if anyone has tried this and how effective it is for picky fish.

Thanks for the input, sorry for the dissertation length explination.
 
Garlic does enhance the fish's appetite but also helps with anything that might be ailing the fish..such as poor digestion... it is not a miracle worker.It is also suppose to help boost the immune system.
 
I've had luck using it in the past, so yes try it.

My trouble is once I soak Shrimp in garlic I have a hard time giving it too the fish, because it enhances my appetite too.
 
I use real garlic diced up.
 
I'm wondering, is there any evidence (anecdotes don't count) that it works? I haven't had any finicky fish but I've read it is supposed to cure internal parasites and such.
 
It does taste good on bread, there's no denying that.
 
Garlic is definitely antimicrobial. There are plenty of scientific studies on it. http://www.springerlink.com/content/n97bp0t343nb8jqa/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6669596

In regards to fish, I have some garlic extract and it hasn't seem to make a difference either way in appetite stimulation, and I'm not sure how successful it would be for antimicrobial purposes simply due to the fact that we're feeding animals garlic in water and it might simply wash off or out and just not be that effective because we can't get it into the system easily.

Here's a good read. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/sp/index.php
 
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