Garlic question
- Thread starter Fishowner
- Start date
Garlic would certainly not be my first line of attack when dealing with ich ....
Likely I am just ignorant but this is the first time I read of anyone utilizing garlic to treat ich (let alone we don't know if this is ich... and let alone we haven't a clue as to the underlying causes of the disease, ich or not). It is usually (always?) used to increase palatability. That's all I knew of garlic uses in our hobby.
Wanted to try something all natural and didn't want to add in any chemicals or go buy salt. Watched and read a couple threads to see if I could just use what i got on me. Not only, i have two pictus cats, and from my experience they are like some of the first to pick up any signs of sickness or disease. Only one of the pictus had like some 10 white spots on it, and it was showing behavior of rubbing itself on the sand substrate that I have for the tank. So the ick was only minor at the moment of discovery.
Sorry to rekindle an old post, but my importer is suggesting I crush & add a clove of garlic per 10gal for a particularly durable ich.
Can one overdose garlic?
My tank stays at 29~31C normally/naturally and I bumped to a steady 32C & added salt with first signs of ich last week on cardinal tetras in a 15gal tetra & clown loach grow-out tank (#@#$!!!). Lost a couple of cards, but all was looking Ok and removed the heater after 72hrs (back to ~30C). 24hrs later and spots are back, another 24 and half the cards are dead and one loach is looking like he might have picked it up.
My dealer/importer says this is the first ich he's had in 5years (first for me in 15 - no AC & room/water doesn't drop below 27), that it does appear to be a particularly durable strain and he's managed to treat with garlic by adding one crushed clove per 10gal. For me this would be 1.5 regular or one big clove, I guess.
Sounds... greasy.
Thoughts?
Can one overdose garlic?
My tank stays at 29~31C normally/naturally and I bumped to a steady 32C & added salt with first signs of ich last week on cardinal tetras in a 15gal tetra & clown loach grow-out tank (#@#$!!!). Lost a couple of cards, but all was looking Ok and removed the heater after 72hrs (back to ~30C). 24hrs later and spots are back, another 24 and half the cards are dead and one loach is looking like he might have picked it up.
My dealer/importer says this is the first ich he's had in 5years (first for me in 15 - no AC & room/water doesn't drop below 27), that it does appear to be a particularly durable strain and he's managed to treat with garlic by adding one crushed clove per 10gal. For me this would be 1.5 regular or one big clove, I guess.
Sounds... greasy.
Thoughts?
Garlic will not kill ich. I believe that the idea is that if fish consume enough of it that parasites such as fish lice etc find the taste (for lack of a better word) offensive. If your fish have ich, I would suggest a more tried & true method to eradicate it. That's my thoughts.
Like RD. mentioned, garlic is not a proven ich method, it's still very vague. And it's not about adding garlic to the water, it's more or less your fish eating the garlic.
