So my fishes at the moment have ick and I just began my treatment yesterday, it was caught early so it should not last very long. I'm just doing an all natural ick recovery by doing a heat treatment and a garlic treatment. But my question is, how do i get my fishes to eat the garlic? I just tried feeding crushed garlic to them, they bit it but they didn't seem to like it and kindof just avoided it once they figured out what the food source was. Also does soaking their main food source (bloodworm) in a little water with cut pieces of garlic give the same effect as them just eating the garlic and do the fish have to fully consume a piece of garlic or just a nibble? Any tips would be nice. Thanks for your time.
Garlic question
- Thread starter Fishowner
- Start date
Try smashing garlic with a favorite food,u really don't need to use much.
This. I would chop it finely and then press it in some water. Use the juice and then soak your food in it and wait until it dries again. Even picky fish should eat it that way.
Also if you want to treat ich naturally, aquarium salt or kosher salt works good also. 1 tbsp per gallon should do the trick. Raise the temp above 84 for 2 weeks with water changes and vacuuming. No need for those harsh meds since you caught it early!
When i had ich, i bumped the temps up and added sea salt, and huge water changes every other day. As for garlic, just get 100% garlic powder from the supermarket and mix it in their food.
Garlic must be fresh for it to be effective,so garlic powder would be useless.
Just a quick update on the treatment. I actually ended the treatment today. The only fish in the tank that showed any signs of ick was a pictus and it had maybe like 4 or 5 spots on it. Very first day of treatment, everything went well except lost a tiger hoplo 
, better one fish then all. Second day of treatment, all ick present on that one pictus disappeared so i assumed that they all died since white spots gone. Today decided to remove treatment cause no sign of ick is present at all and since none of the other fish had ick and if there was present ick in water, all has to be dead now since i set water temp to 90-93F and from what i heard and read, that there are no known strains to survive this high of a temperature.
, better one fish then all. Second day of treatment, all ick present on that one pictus disappeared so i assumed that they all died since white spots gone. Today decided to remove treatment cause no sign of ick is present at all and since none of the other fish had ick and if there was present ick in water, all has to be dead now since i set water temp to 90-93F and from what i heard and read, that there are no known strains to survive this high of a temperature.
While often stated on various fish forums, that is absolutely not true.
https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...he-prevention-of-disease.591358/#post-6984805
I have been writing about garlic and its use in fish feed for over a decade, plenty of links out there in cyber-land that demonstrate the positive effect of garlic, even when used in a dry form. In fact, when fed to most finfish, the dry form is best as terrestrial plant based fat is minimized. In the natural form it can actually become toxic to certain species if fed in excess. (due to the lipid content)
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