garlic

[ebelz]

Anyone have any luck treating a reef tank infected with ich using garlic? I sliced it thin and crushed it in a micro bag placed it in the tank and it clouded the tank up quite a bit. Is this normal? One of my corals closed up and bent over also. Does Garlic change the water chemistry, drop ph-alk, or ad amonia-nitrite-trate.

[TerryB]

Who told you to put garlic directly in the aquarium water? It is supposed to be used by soaking the food with it and then feeding the soaked food to the fish each day. Some say garlic works and some say it didn't work to sure ich for them. Personally, I think it is a better preventative than a cure. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for quarantining your fish for a MINIMIUM of three weeks BEFORE they go into the display tank.
Terry B

[ebelz]

I was told by a gentleman and my LFS. Who swore by it and said that he had gotten a bad batch of fish and the Garlic remedy worked for him. Also reading this article suggested putting the garlic in directly with it being more effective than feeding it.
http://www.reefs.org/library/article...tes-jorge.html
In addition I had all fish in a quarantine tank for a month cured the fish, put them back in the main tank and within days had it back again.

[TerryB]

I am familar with Horge's article and I have even communicated with him about it. Maybe you had better read that article again if you think he advocates putting garlic directly in the aquarium water.
These are quotes from the article:

"Now, if oral administration can somehow be effective, how about administration by broadcast of garlic extract to the water? It certainly at first blush seems more akin to the "correct" method of delivery: topical application."

"But, there is the obvious problem of dilution, and the thick biological soup that passes for tank water waiting to once again, neutralize any allicin. Schematically, this is much the same barricade that hemoglobin presented to ingested allicin in the preceding paragraphs. You can again either overwhelm this barrier via massive dosage, with the risk of impact this time on susceptible in-tank microorganisms across the board, or you bypass contact with the water."

You might want to be careful getting advice at most LFS. You should get better advice here when it comes to disease treatments.
OK so you had the fish in quarantine for a month and it sounds like they had ich in quarantine. What did you treat them with and what was the dose? If you used copper what brand and did you test the level twice a day? It sounds to me that whatever you used in quarantine did not cure the fish completely. However, if a single fish remained in the infected display tank while you treated the other fish in a seperate quarantine then the ich would be waiting for them when they got back.

Terry B

[naesco]

The idea here Ebelz is to get as much extract in the fish as possible.
This means feeding only garlic soaked food and feeding often.


REEForm: Never buy a fish from the Philippines or Indonesia where the use of cyanide is rampant..

[Triterium]

My clown had ich a couple months ago. I soaked all the food in garlic extract. The Ich was gone in a couple days. Worth a try.